『Make Me A Nerd with Mandy Kaplan』のカバーアート

Make Me A Nerd with Mandy Kaplan

Make Me A Nerd with Mandy Kaplan

著者： TruStory FM
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Hey folks. Mandy Kaplan here. I’d like to share a bit about my intentions and mission for MMAN if you’ll indulge me. You will? Huzzah!

Look, I am a lot of things. I’m a writer, actress, mother, and lover of musicals and cats, but NOT Cats, The Musical. Give me a little bit of credit, would ya? So...throughout my life, I’ve been surrounded (and intrigued) by all things nerd. A sister who plays D&D, a Star Wars-obsessed husband, friends who love anime, comic books, video games, and...well, you get the picture. Somehow, I have always held it all at arm's length. Not to get too deep, but maybe I never thought I was smart enough to follow it. Or maybe I have control issues and have never been able to embrace fantastical things like dragons and time travel. Until now!

So, with an open mind and heart, I am ready to join this massive (and beautifully inclusive) club and GEEK THE #%$ OUT! It’s time for all my wonderfully strange friends to baptize me into NERD-DOM. Please join me on this journey. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover or remember a side of yourself along the way. Or at least make fun of me as I try!© TruStory FM アート 社会科学
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  • The Truth is RIGHT HERE: X-Files with Chelsea Stardust

    The Truth is RIGHT HERE: X-Files with Chelsea Stardust
    2026/05/18
    The X-Files is, technically, a show about two FBI agents investigating extraterrestrial activity, government conspiracy, and the unexplained — which is why it's mildly hilarious that filmmaker Chelsea Stardust's curated onramp for Mandy contains, by Mandy's own count, exactly zero alien episodes. What it does contain: a man who hibernates in a nest every thirty years and squeezes through air ducts; a parasitic humanoid Flukeman swimming around the sewer system (related, somehow, to Chernobyl); a gentle psychic played by Peter Boyle who can see exactly how everyone is going to die; an inbred Pennsylvania family hiding their quadruple-amputee mother under the bed; and Bryan Cranston's head, which will explode unless he keeps driving west. Mandy was, against every instinct she possesses, completely charmed.What emerges across the conversation is a love letter to a show whose secret weapon turns out not to be the monsters at all. It's the writing (Vince Gilligan, pre-Breaking Bad, was already writing Vince Gilligan episodes). It's the sparing use of special effects, which means the few times you actually see the Flukeman, you really see him. It's a theme song Mark Snow created by smashing his forearm onto a keyboard in frustration, which is the most rock-and-roll origin story in television scoring. And it's the Mulder-Scully dynamic, which Chelsea makes a passionate case is the actual core of the entire enterprise — the relationships first, the body horror second, the Cigarette Smoking Man a distant third.By the end, Mandy has watched five episodes, formed strong opinions about Scully's footwear ergonomics, identified Roseanne's Dan Conner's best friend Chuck in a guest spot decades later, and developed genuine sympathy for a sewer-dwelling parasite. Chelsea has confessed that she's never gotten to talk about The X-Files on a podcast before, which feels like a crime against nerd culture and is hereby corrected.GUEST SPOTLIGHTChelsea Stardust is a writer, director, and producer with a deep bench of horror credentials. She made her directorial debut with the sci-fi thriller All That We Destroy (Hulu, part of Blumhouse's Into the Dark series); directed the horror-comedy Satanic Panic (written by novelist Grady Hendrix, available on VOD); and most recently co-directed Grind, a horror anthology about the gig economy that premiered at SXSW 2026. She co-hosts the horror movie podcast Sitting in the Dark with Tommy Metz III on TruStory FM, runs the Losers Book Club in Los Angeles, and is generally the kind of person who treats nerdiness as a vocation. Find her on Instagram at @chelseastardust and her book club at @losersbookclubla.Chelsea Stardust on InstagramSitting in the Dark podcast (TruStory FM)Losers Book Club LA on InstagramChelsea’s FilmsAll That We Destroy (2019)Satanic Panic (2019)Grind (2026)The X-Files Episodes Discussed“Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)“Squeeze” (Season 1, Episode 3)“The Host” (Season 2, Episode 2)“Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” (Season 3, Episode 4)“Home” (Season 4, Episode 2)“Drive” (Season 6, Episode 2)“Monday” (Season 6, Episode 14)People MentionedGrady Hendrix — novelist; wrote Satanic PanicDave Grusin — composer of The Firm scoreTommy Metz III on Instagram — Sitting in the Dark co-hostReferenced BooksThe Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady HendrixIt (Stephen King novel) — referenced for thematic parallels with “Squeeze”Referenced Films & SeriesScanners (1981) — Cronenberg; cited for the “Drive” cold openSpeed (1994) — the spiritual cousin to “Drive”The Goonies (1985) — Mandy’s prior episode referenceThe Firm (1993) — for Mandy’s Dave Grusin score referenceIt (1990 miniseries) — Tim Curry as PennywiseDisclosure Day (2026) — the Spielberg UFO film Chelsea referencedPast Make Me a Nerd EpisodesIt’s Our Time Down Here: A Goonies Comfort Rewatch with Krissy Lenz — series hub (specific episode page)Make Me a NerdMake Me a Nerd membershipMandy Kaplan on Instagram@mandymiscast on TikTok---Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.
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    1 時間 9 分
  • Watch Me Fly… Serenity with Krissy Lenz

    Watch Me Fly… Serenity with Krissy Lenz
    2026/05/11
    Here is a fact about Firefly, which is to say the beloved Joss Whedon space western that aired on Fox in 2002: the network, in its infinite wisdom, decided to air the two-hour pilot — the one designed to introduce you to the entire world, its characters, and the general vibe of a Western in space — not first, but somewhere in the middle. This is approximately like hosting a dinner party and opening with dessert, except the dessert is also on fire, and also you've invited the guests' most confused relatives. The show was cancelled. The fans — who call themselves Browncoats, because of course they do — responded not with acceptance but with a multi-year grassroots campaign that eventually produced a movie (Serenity, 2005), a documentary about the making of said movie (Done the Impossible), and a fan-organized party circuit called Shindigs that still runs today. This week, returning champion Krissy Lenz walks Mandy through all of it.The movie itself, Mandy discovers, is tonally bewildering in the best way — part heist, part Star Wars homage, part horror film, part comedy, with Chiwetel Ejiofor showing up as the most civilized, polite, and unnervingly calm assassin in the 'Verse. ("He believes in this better world that even he's not welcome in," Krissy notes, which is, frankly, the kind of villain thesis statement most movies wish they could pull off.) Summer Glau is doing ballet-grade choreography in combat boots and a slip dress. Alan Tudyk is delightful, briefly, and then — for contractual reasons Krissy helpfully explains — permanently unavailable. And Nathan Fillion, the internet's favorite convention dad, spends the climax in a physical fight that looks suspiciously like the end of every Star Wars movie you've ever seen.Along the way, the conversation takes its requisite detours: how to separate the art from the artist when the artist is Joss Whedon and the allegations are what they are; the rehabilitation economy around Louis CK; whether Mal is charmingly brusque or just, on closer 45-year-old inspection, kind of a dick; and the enduring question of whether Joel McHale should be allowed to play anyone other than Joel McHale. By the end, Mandy has agreed to watch the series, consider attending a Shindig, and do a future episode on Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog — which is, by any reasonable metric, a successful recruitment.Find Krissy
    • The Most Excellent 80s Movies Podcast
    • Gank That Drank
    • Neighborhood Comedy Theater (Mesa, AZ)
    Connect with the ShowFollow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensMake Me a Nerd runs on curious people. If that's you, the inner circle is at makemeanerd.com/join — it's where the show goes deeper between episodes, and where Mandy's most embarrassingly enthusiastic fans have found their people.
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    Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.
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    52 分
  • No Time To Play… Ender’s Game with Erica Cochran

    No Time To Play… Ender’s Game with Erica Cochran
    2026/05/04
    Mandy Kaplan has been handed a Hugo-winning, Nebula-winning, Mormon-authored military sci-fi classic about a six-year-old being psychologically tortured into committing accidental alien genocide, and reader, she has THOUGHTS. This week, her son Casey's high school chemistry teacher — the proud Trojan, theater company founder, and science-and-theater double-nerd Erica Cochran — walks Mandy through Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel Ender's Game, a book that predicted the internet, iPads, online political discourse, and rogue AI with such unsettling accuracy that you kind of want to check if Card also has next week's lottery numbers.Before they even open the book, there's The Orson Scott Card Problem to address — namely, that he is an anti-gay-rights activist who appears to have written a scene in which his six-year-old protagonist convinces a naked bully to also get naked before their fistfight. Mandy has some thoughts about this. Erica has some thoughts about this. Everyone has some thoughts about this. They proceed with their "art vs. artist" disclaimer firmly in place, with Mandy reserving the right to get in a few jabs. She gets in several.What unfolds is a joyful, slightly unhinged, deeply thoughtful conversation about a book Mandy read every word of and still couldn't quite follow ("I got a lot of beeps and boops"), while Erica — who has reread the series multiple times and done "a lot of therapy" — sees the full emotional architecture underneath. They dig into why so many of these dystopias center on children (the innocence, the smallness, the inability to consent), why Ender is Valentine with the capacity to be Peter, why the government commissions a third child from a family whose parents are, diplomatically speaking, not geniuses, and whether the book's climactic religion-founding is a defense of the Book of Mormon or a sly admission that anyone can make up a religion. Also discussed: Scientology's youth promotion track, the 2013 movie (Erica: "two thumbs down"), the inexplicable prevalence of the insult "fart-eater," and the fact that Petra is doing her absolute best and does not deserve Mandy's Gen-X scolding.By the end, Mandy is converted — not to loving the book, exactly, but to seeing what she missed in it. Which is, honestly, the whole point of this podcast.Connect with the ShowFollow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensMake Me a Nerd runs on curious people. If that's you, the inner circle is at makemeanerd.com/join — it's where the show goes deeper between episodes, and where Mandy's most embarrassingly enthusiastic fans have found their people.
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    Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.
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    1 時間 1 分
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