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  • It’s Manga Madness with Helen McCarthy!

    It’s Manga Madness with Helen McCarthy!
    2026/03/23
    Manga has a first-impression problem. It's enormous, genre-defying, visually foreign, and comes wrapped in the kind of devoted fan energy that makes newcomers feel like they've wandered into the graduate seminar by mistake. Mandy Kaplan — who did her manga homework at the Department of Motor Vehicles while her son got his learner's permit — is here to represent everyone who's been lurking at the door. Her guide is Helen McCarthy: author of the very first English-language book on Japanese animation, the first English book on Hayao Miyazaki, and thirteen published works on the subject in total. Her fourteenth, The Manga Bible, drops March 24th. The woman does not stop.They work through three titles Mandy actually read: One Piece, which turns out to be a sneaky piece of social conditioning about building friendships when the world is terrifying (Eiichiro Oda knew exactly what he was doing); Nana, which delivers all the drama of Sex and the City set in 1999 Tokyo — a friendship story Mandy almost completely missed because she was reading it between DMV announcements; and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which she found deeply upsetting, and means that as a compliment. Helen contextualizes all of it: the cartoony violence, the naïve heroines, the Indonesian protesters waving a One Piece flag, and why manga that looks contemporary might actually be set in your mother's girlhood. By the end, Mandy may not be a manga nerd. But the door is open — and she can see the plushies from here.Helen McCarthy is the author of the first English-language books on Japanese animation and on Hayao Miyazaki — which is to say, she was there taking manga seriously before the rest of the English-speaking world had even formed an opinion about it. She's consulted on doctoral theses, spoken at universities from Akita International to the University of Maryland, and built a career out of a manga collection that started with Spanish-language comics her partner found on a graduation trip to Mallorca. Her latest book, The Manga Bible — an accessible, people-first entry into the world of manga and the artists behind it — is out March 24th from Prestel. Find her at HelenMcCarthy.net.Referenced in This Episode
    • One Piece — manga and anime by Eiichiro Oda; live-action series on Netflix
    • Nana — manga by Ai Yazawa
    • Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind — manga and film by Hayao Miyazaki
    Past Episodes You Might Like
    • One Piece with Zach Logan
    • Watchmen with Adam Rose
    • Superman Smashes the Klan with Jimmy Aquino
    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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    55 分
  • Wonder Man: A Superhero Show About Not Being a Superhero

    Wonder Man: A Superhero Show About Not Being a Superhero
    2026/03/16
    Wonder Man is, technically speaking, a Marvel show. It exists in the MCU. Captain America is out there somewhere. The Hulk is presumably smashing things. And none of that matters even a little bit, because this is a show about a guy who bombs auditions, self-sabotages every relationship he has, and quotes Pretty Woman during an improv because he's too afraid to access a genuine emotion. Simon Williams has a superpower, sure, but his actual problem is that he's every actor you've ever met who's three bad decisions away from selling real estate — which, by the way, Joey Pantoliano's character would enthusiastically recommend.Matthew Fox returns to the show and admits they’re the noob this time. Because while Matthew can navigate the MCU lore — explaining Trevor Slattery's bonkers journey from fake terrorist in Iron Man 3 to mystical land adventurer in Shang-Chi to reluctant government informant — it's Mandy who actually understands the world in which this show lives. The auditions that feel like psychological warfare. The directors who demand you "take risks" and then get furious when you do. The friends who call casting offices pretending to be your manager. All of it is painfully, hilariously real, and the show treats it with a respect that certain podcasts hosted by extremely famous actors have never managed.Matthew unpacks Wonder Man's superpower as a metaphor for passing — for anyone who's ever had to hide a fundamental part of themselves to get a job, keep a relationship, or just survive. It's the kind of reading that makes you realize why science fiction matters: not because the problems are unimaginable, but because they look exactly like the ones we can imagine. And if that doesn't get you, the show also features a black-and-white standalone episode about a guy called Damar the Doorman whose entire superpower is that people can walk through him, which is both the most absurd premise imaginable and a devastatingly accurate parable about how we consume and discard fame. Josh Gad plays himself as a monster. The episode description is literally just "Ding dong." It's perfect.By the finale, Simon hasn't become a hero in any traditional sense. He breaks his best friend out of jail — not to save the world, just because Trevor took the fall for him and that's what you do. It's personal and small and exactly right. Mandy and Matthew agree: this is a character study wearing a superhero costume it never actually puts on, and it's better for it.Links & NotesMatthew Fox's hub: TheEthicalPanda.comThe Marvel Movie Minute podcast (currently covering Captain America: Winter Soldier)Wonder Man on Disney+If you like this episode ... The Goonies (featuring Mandy's Joey Pantoliano confession)Agatha All AlongCaptain AmericaThunderbolts (Make Me A Nerd)Thunderbolts (Superhero Ethics)Thunderbolts (The Film Board)The Penguin (with Matthew Fox)The Orville (with Matthew Fox)Last of Us (with Matthew Fox)Links & NotesFollow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensJoin the nerdy inner circle: makemeanerd.com/join---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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    54 分
  • The Stardom Burrito: Bo Burnham, Comedy Nerds, and Chipotle Metaphors with Tommy Metz III

    The Stardom Burrito: Bo Burnham, Comedy Nerds, and Chipotle Metaphors with Tommy Metz III
    2026/03/02
    There are two kinds of people in the world: people who cross their arms and dare a comedian to make them laugh, and people who show up already giggling before the lights go down. Mandy is firmly in the first camp, which makes it all the more remarkable that Bo Burnham's Make Happy got her — really got her — starting with the moment the man wakes up in full clown makeup and ending with a gut-punch silence that reframes the entire hour you just watched. Tommy Metz III, Mandy's most recurring guest, self-identified comedy nerd, and a man who has memorized entire comedy albums without meaning to, is here to explain why.The conversation covers an absurd amount of ground: the rise and fall of the eighties comedy boom (when every laundromat had a comedy club and every comedian got a sitcom deal they couldn't sustain past episode two), the alternative comedy movement that killed the piano-tie artifice, why Dane Cook was basically the MySpace version of Bo Burnham, and Tommy's deeply held conviction that musical comedy is like impressions — transcendent when it works, a hat on a much less impressive hat when it doesn't.At the heart of it is what Tommy catches on his latest rewatch that he'd never noticed before: the Chipotle joke isn't just a Chipotle joke. When Burnham circles back to "I wouldn't have asked for all that if you'd told me it would be such a mess," he's not talking about a burrito you guys — he's talking about fame, perfectionism, and the loneliness of building something extraordinary entirely by yourself.And then the special ends the way it has to: with silence, an empty room, and the quiet admission that people don't laugh when they're alone. They laugh in groups. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good argument for listening to this episode with someone. Go ahead. Introduce Grandma to Burnham by way of this podcast. What could go wrong?People & References Mentioned:
    • Bo Burnham — Make Happy (2016, Netflix), Inside (2021, Netflix), Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous (MTV)
    • Christopher Storer — Co-director of Make Happy, creator/director of The Bear
    • Stephen Lynch — Musical comedian, starred in The Wedding Singer on Broadway
    • Steve Martin — Comedian, actor, banjo enthusiast
    • Anthony Jeselnik — Comedian
    • Conan O'Brien — Late night host, former Simpsons and SNL writer
    • Andy Kindler — Comedian, comedy deconstructionist
    • Todd Glass — Comedian
    • Dave Attell — Comedian's comedian
    • Jeff Ross — Comedian
    • Dane Cook — MySpace-era comedy disruptor
    • Nate Bargatze — Comedian
    • Flight of the Conchords — Musical comedy duo
    • Tenacious D — Musical comedy duo
    • Matt Friend — Impressionist, TikTok
    • Rick Glassman — Comedian, host of Take Your Shoes Off podcast
    • Fred Armisen — SNL cast member, Nicholas Fehn character
    • Firesign Theatre — 1960s/70s counterculture comedy troupe
    • Mr. Show with Bob and David, Kids in the Hall, The State — Sketch comedy shows
    • Ben Folds — "Rockin' the Suburbs"
    • Zac Brown Band — "Chicken Fried"
    • Mortified — Live show and podcast where people read their childhood diaries
    • George Carlin — "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television"

    Tommy Metz III's Shows:
    • All the Feelings Presents: Still Adulting (with Pete Wright) — allthefeelings.fun
    • Sitting in the Dark — Horror movie monthly podcast
    • The Film Board

    Make Me a Nerd:
    • Website: makemeanerd.com/join
    • Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens
    • TikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast

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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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    56 分
  • Where's the Food? The Hunger Games Book-to-Movie Breakdown with Mona Chatterjee

    Where's the Food? The Hunger Games Book-to-Movie Breakdown with Mona Chatterjee
    2026/02/23
    Here's the thing about watching a movie one week after reading the book it's based on: you become the world's most insufferable viewing companion. And Mandy—who consumed Suzanne Collins's novel and then immediately sat down for the 2012 film like some kind of dystopian speed-run—has NOTES. Guest Mona Chatterjee is back for what is officially Make Me A Nerd's first-ever adaptation episode, and together they discover that reading the book first is both a gift and a curse, because now you know exactly what's missing and you will not shut up about it.What's missing, weirdly, is food. In a story literally called The Hunger Games, the movie manages to skip almost every meal, every hunt, every lovingly described roast beef with peas and bread and butter. Mandy invokes Andy Cohen's legendary insistence that Real Housewives viewers need to hear what everyone ordered at dinner, which is either the most unhinged comparison in podcast history or the most correct one.Beyond the missing meals, they devour the film's genuinely brilliant visual choices—the bleached-out gray of District 12 versus the candy-colored absurdity of Panem's Capitol residents (who look less Marie Antoinette and more "Andy Warhol meets Pablo Picasso"), the Apollo 11-style control room that gave Mandy exactly the behind-the-scenes Capitol view she begged for during the book episode, and Jennifer Lawrence's performance, which makes you forget you already know the ending.They snack through casting what-ifs (Kristin Chenoweth as Effie would have been INCREDIBLE, John C. Reilly as Haymitch would have been a disaster), why Lenny Kravitz as Cinna was "too mellow and sexy" for a character they both pictured as a fierce little costume gremlin, and the eternal mystery of why Hollywood cast four interchangeable pasty white guys as the male tributes and expected audiences to tell them apart during fight scenes. The answer, as always, is that maybe they all shouldn't have been white.Make Me a Nerd:
    • Website: makemeanerd.com/join
    • Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens
    • TikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast

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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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    46 分
  • May the Odds Ever Smell of Sweat: A Hunger Games Deep Dive with Mona Chatterjee • The Novel

    May the Odds Ever Smell of Sweat: A Hunger Games Deep Dive with Mona Chatterjee • The Novel
    2026/02/16
    Yes, I know—it's 2026, Hunger Games came out almost two decades ago, and we've all moved on now to whatever fresh dystopian nightmare is currently trending. But here's the thing: Suzanne Collins' story about state-sponsored child murder dressed up as entertainment has only gotten MORE relevant, and that should terrify us all.Mandy welcomes back Mona Chatterjee (Miscast alum, Billboard chart artist, international beauty brand impresario) to explore why a book that opens with "the day of the reaping" manages to hook readers from age 12 to 52, and why its themes of inequality, complicity, and manufactured spectacle feel less like fiction and more like tomorrow's damned news.The conversation goes deep fast. Both Mandy and Mona fixate on the people we DON'T see enough of—the peacekeepers who beat kids into submission then go home to dinner, the styling team who beautify tributes before sending them to die, Haymitch drinking himself unconscious because he relives his trauma every single year.Mandy pitches "Below Deck: Panem Edition" to explore how normal people participate in monstrous systems, and honestly? That's the Hannah Arendt question applied to YA literature, and it's exactly what makes this book endure. They also tackle Katniss's backwards trust issues (she trusts Rue immediately but not Peeta, who literally saved her life), the Kaplan Curse (of course Prim's name would be drawn when it's only in there once), and Mandy's recurring obsessions: Why doesn't anyone mention how everything smells?As Mona says, the Capitol's greatest fear isn't violence—it's hope. Hope is what sparks rebellion. Hope is what makes people believe things could be different. Collins wrote this in 2008, drawing on her father's Vietnam experiences and her concerns about reality TV desensitization. Every year since, it's become more prescient, more uncomfortably close to our actual world. So yes, we're still talking about The Hunger Games—because we're still living in the world that made it necessary.Make Me a Nerd:
    • Website: makemeanerd.com/join
    • Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens
    • TikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast

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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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    51 分
  • It’s Our Time Down Here: A Goonies Comfort Rewatch with Krissy Lenz

    It’s Our Time Down Here: A Goonies Comfort Rewatch with Krissy Lenz
    2026/02/09
    This week on Make Me a Nerd, Mandy Kaplan does the bravest thing a grown adult can do: she prescribes herself a medically unnecessary, emotionally essential dose of The Goonies—because sometimes “self-care” is a bubble bath, and sometimes it’s screaming “HEY YOU GUYS” into the void until the void screams back. Joined by recurring fan-favorite guest Krissy Lenz (of The Most Excellent 80s Movies), Mandy revisits Richard Donner’s chaotic, sweet, frequently-overlapping-yelling masterpiece and marvels at how it manages to be simultaneously a kids’ adventure film and a movie that opens with a fake suicide and drops the S-word roughly nineteen times like it’s being paid per syllable.They dig into why the character introductions during the opening chase are basically a clinic in “how to meet an ensemble cast fast,” why Brand deserves a modern reappraisal as the patron saint of big-brother competence, and why pirates apparently had both scurvy and an interior designer on payroll. Along the way, the conversation detours into Corey Feldman lore (including the surreal fact of Corey Feldman calling Krissy directly because he couldn’t get into the recording app), the weirdly persistent “octopus scene” ghost that’s referenced even when cut, and the uncomfortable 80s habit of using fat-shaming as a punchline so routinely you can practically hear a studio executive chanting, “Yes, yes, keep punching down, it’s working.”And because Mandy’s brain is both tender and mischievous, we also get: a brief masterclass in “planning crimes vs committing crimes” (involving a pizza smuggled into a movie theater), a quick Make Me a Nerd sidebar into the threat of scurvy in modern adulthood, and a round of Goonies trivia that ends exactly the way it should: with friendship intact and pride mildly wounded.Make Me a Nerd:
    • Website: makemeanerd.com/join
    • Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens
    • TikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast

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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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    53 分
  • The Great Pottery Throw Down: British, Boring, & Bang-On Perfect with Jeremy Klavens

    The Great Pottery Throw Down: British, Boring, & Bang-On Perfect with Jeremy Klavens
    2026/01/26
    Mandy’s latest “please turn me into a nerd” assignment comes disguised as the most harmless thing imaginable: a British competition show about pottery. And yes, at first it feels like the TV equivalent of a warm cup of tea you forgot you made. But then Jeremy Klavens (return guest, television editor, and the father of Mandy’s child—pending) walks her into The Great Pottery Throw Down and suddenly everyone is emotionally invested in cheese sets, kiln drama, and whether it’s legally possible for one judge to cry at this many objects in one lifetime.What follows is a cozy, gently chaotic tour of why this show hits different: the unusually kind contestant energy, the Bake Off DNA, the “we’re all trapped in a pandemic bubble so now we’re basically family” vibe, and the strange intimacy of watching hands work wet clay on a spinning wheel (this episode contains a brief detour into “is pottery… sexy?” and the answer is: it’s complicated, but also abso-potting-lutely). Along the way, Mandy and Jeremy size up the season’s personalities, judge quirks, and the occasional challenge that feels like the producers asked, “What if we simply made everyone fail at once?”And underneath the jokes, there’s a real question humming: why are shows like this so comforting, and why do we crave “soft competition” where the prize is mostly pride, a tiny trophy, and the right to say “bang on” with authority? If you’ve ever wanted a reality show palate cleanser that still gives you something to argue about on the couch, this is your invitation to the pottery parade. Bring subtitles. Possibly cheese.Make Me a Nerd:
    • Website: makemeanerd.com/join
    • Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens
    • TikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast

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    1 時間 7 分