Pop DNA

Stake it or leave it, this is our summer series!

We decided to spend our summer deep diving into vampire lore and the ever evolving role of the undead in popular fiction.

In our first installment, we define our terms and talk a little about the folklore origins of vampire stories. We also take a quick look at vampires in popular fiction, highlighting a few works and broader trends that we will delve into deeper in future episodes.

Fu...

Pop DNA scored an exclusive early interview with up-and-coming debut author Rhonda Watts for an intimate, no-holds-barred interview.

Rhonda's debut cozy fantasy book, Spells & Sensibility, is currently on submission, so no spoilers or big news yet, but she wanted to talk about it with her friend Erin, and we recorded the conversation.

We talk about Rhonda's writing process, how she got the idea for the book, making time to write ...

Rhonda is still in her Medievalist Era and making it everyone's problem, and Erin just wants to talk about some creatures, so you could say this is a typical Pop DNA episode.

We continue our exploration of LOTR's relationship to medievalism in pop culture with a look at the beloved Medieval Y2K moment, exemplified in movies like A Knight's Tale, Ella Enchanted, Shrek, and of course the Jackson Lord of the Rings films. And the Star W...

The Medieval Revival of the 1960s and '70s coincided and communicated closely with the LOTR books' surge in popularity at that time.

Hippies and other sects of 1960s counterculture adopted the Shire and the Hobbits as their own, and produced expressions of art and culture that Tolkien was really kind of a curmudgeon about.

In this episode we explore how medievalism (or MODievalism) permeated 1960s pop culture, in art, literature, me...

This episode is all about how the Victorian era's culture and politics shaped J. R. R. Tolkien and, by extension, the world of Middle Earth.

We start with a look at the Grotesque vs. the Romantic Middle Ages as defined by medievalist David Matthews, and how each approach was at play in the late 19th century Medieval Revival. We use Matthews' work as a framework for analyzing the medievalism of The Lord of the Rings, and then take a ...

Remember when we tried to have a comprehensive discussion of The Lord of the Rings in one 55-minute episode? Turns out there's a lot more to it.

In this introduction to our LOTR (Revisited) series, we take a quiz to find out which characters we are, get on a soapbox about how adaptations and their respective source materials are two separate entities, then highlight a few of the topics we plan to delve deeper into over the next few ...

It's that time of year again! We came back from our long hiatus to talk about our favorite TV and movies of 2025, plus a few books, and a few things that were NOT our favorite.

First we had to spend a good chunk of time talking about all our feelings on Wicked: For Good, or should we call it... Wicked: For Bad...

We also talked about the different common themes or through lines we noticed in the media we were drawn to, before popcorn...

We are finally done talking about Sex and the City!

We conclude our discussion with an examination of Miranda and Charlotte as foils of one another, and through the lens of archetypes rather than fully developed characters, branching off from our talk last episode about the theory of the three other women as facets of Carrie.

This leads to the most interesting part of the entire series, where we delve into the classic four-character-...

This episode's title comes from the 1626 play by English dramatist John Ford, because we are very smart.

And turns out, it kinda fits for discussing SATC's apparent attitude toward Samantha Jones. We dive into Sam's key romantic relationships to explore how her attitude toward sex and dating was contrasted with that of the other three women, and what that says about how the show viewed women's sexuality.

We also discuss different it...

Is Sex and the City a feminist text?

That's the question we sort of attempt to answer in this episode, but ultimately we find it more interesting to talk about Sabrina Carpenter's 2025 album Man's Best Friend and the 2009 romcom film He's Just Not That Into You starring Ginnifer Goodwin.

Our rambles meander through discussions of how male characters are written on SATC, and how the show explores the assumed gender binary in general,...

Heads' up that we had several forms of technical difficulties with recording this episode, so apologies in advance for any subpar sound quality!

Are we ever ready to talk about Sex and the City? Unclear, but we're going to.

In part 1 of our SATC series, we discuss some general thoughts on the HBO show, its origins, and its cultural impact. We also talk about our first experiences with the series before giving a preview of the topics...

Welcome to our slightly unhinged summer series, Millennial Falcon!

This three-part series is all about the fandoms we've never felt like we were truly a part of until the past few years, our Millennial Falcons, if you will. For Rhonda, that's romance novels, and for Erin it's Star Wars.

In our introductory episode, we discuss our histories with our respective Millennial Falcons, why we feel it took us so long to engage with them, and...

In the finale of our The Office series and of our regular season, we look at the show's ties to popular media that came both before and after.

Erin did a deep dive into the history of the mockumentary, and you won't believe what the first one was!

We also discuss some well-known mockumentary films, like This is Spinal Tap and Best in Show, and works that use mockumentary elements, such as When Harry Met Sally and Arrested Development...

In part four of our discussion of The Office, we dive in to the various romance storylines the show featured, and how we feel about them!

From the classic sitcom "will-they-or-won't-they" tension between Jim and Pam, to Michael and Holly's second chance romance, to the hilariously toxic relationship between Kelly and Ryan, there's a little something for everyone. (Erin's personal favorite is, of course, Dwangela.)

Our exploration vee...

“Do I need to be liked? Absolutely not. I like to be liked. I enjoy being liked. I have to be liked. But it's not like this compulsive need to be liked, like my need to be praised.”

–Michael Scott

Likeability plays a huge role in how characters on The Office relate to one another, and how we as the audience perceive them. Discuss!

This episode also features our second Finer Things Club meeting, in which we talk abou...

Despite its undercurrent of warmth and optimism, The Office (US) went to some pretty dystopian places in its explorations of the workplace--which were really just reflections of the boring dystopia of our reality.

In this episode, we look at how The Office fits within the context of Workplace Dystopian media, works such as Superstore, Office Space, Sorry to Bother You, and Silicon Valley. We also place The Office head-to-head with t...

If you've ever listened to us trade The Office references on the pod and thought, "why don't they just talk about The Office already?" this new series is for you!

In your orientation packet, you'll find an overview of our thoughts on the American series in comparison with the original British version, and a quiz to discover which characters we are. We also go over a preview of the topics we plan to discuss in the coming episodes, in...

Our yearly tradition of discussing our favorite movies and TV, plus a little music and books, is back!

We had every intention of talking about Wickiator/Glicked, but there's really no story there. There's Wicked, which we talked about for far longer than we intended because we had so many thoughts, and then there's Gladiator, which... was a movie.

We also talked about some common themes we noticed in the media we were drawn to in t...