Material Girls

Material Girls

A scholarly podcast about pop culture hosted by Hannah McGregor and Marcelle Kosman, produced by Witch, Please Productions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episodes

December 9, 2025 67 mins

We always nerd out, but in this episode we're joined in our geek sesh by the incredibly charming, brilliant and funny Lindy West (she/her) and Meagan Hatcher-Mays (she/her) to discuss (drumroll!) The Lord of the Rings trilogy. As you may already know, Hannah and Marcelle share a love of JRR Tolkien's world and in this episode they finally get to discuss Peter Jackson's adaptation from the early aughts.


The episode begins with an...

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Tune in for our off-week casual conversation! As always, Coach joins Hannah and Marcelle for this Material Concerns episode featuring a very long check-in (shocking!) and an Oops All Oops segment that also goes kind of long (oops!). Plus, if you like tangents, you'll love our chat about Zac Efron's performance of Bet On It in High School Musical 2. Part II of our episode includes Left on the Table (all about Lord of the Rings)...

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November 25, 2025 61 mins

In today's episode, we jumped right back on the Emerald City Express with third-time guest, Leena Norms (she/her). Leena joined us for our episode Wonka x Antisemitism and Censorship in January 2024 and then again in December 2024 for our episode Wicked x Paratexts. Now she's back to help us make sense of Wicked: For Good. Marcelle leads the episode beginning with a quick conversation about femslash, a subgenre of fan fiction which...

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In this Material Concerns episode, we debrief Halloween and an Okay, Hear Me Out segment quickly gets into a conversation abut boundaries and control. If you want more, head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease for Part II! It begins with a quick convo about Harry Potter (if you believe it!) before moving into Consumer Retorts and Make It Make Sense! Tune in to hear Coach get scolded for not voting before taking a nap.


And don't forget,...

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November 11, 2025 58 mins

Happy SWEET NOVEMBER! In this episode, we're talking about LOAD-BEARING MAN Keanu Reeves. What do we mean when we say load-bearing? You'll have to listen to the episode to find out! Tune in for a conversation about Reeves' extensive and varied catalogue of (at least) 76 films! You'll learn all about Marcelle's admiration for this celebrity whose star image is colored by the public's sense of his "goodness." We talk feminism, mascul...

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We recorded this Material Concerns on Halloween and BOY DOES IT SHOW! Enjoy a chaotic convo about costumes, dragons and Game of Thrones. Let us know what you think about the new segment in the comments!!


Head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease to listen to Part II! For as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and part two of all Material Concerns episodes! Go to patreon.com/ohwitchpl...

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October 28, 2025 62 mins

We're throwing it back to the 1996 cult classic film The Craft just in time for Halloween! We begin with a conversation about Hannah and Marcelle's teenage witch phases (of course they both had them), before digging into the filmic landscape of the 90s. Hannah argues that The Craft's interest in girlhood and power was a catalyst that paved the way for pop culture to come, like Buffy and Charmed and Practical Magic. Hannah then draw...

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Another Material Concerns, another long check in! Followed by Creature Report and Mailbag Sampler (Spreadsheet Sampler??).


Head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease to listen to Part II! For as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and part two of all Material Concerns episodes! Go to patreon.com/ohwitchplease now to join a tier that works for your budget!


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Music Credits:

“Shopping Mall”...

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October 14, 2025 65 mins

~ This episode contains some spoilers about The X Files ~


This week we dive into beloved television series, The X Files (1993-2002), with Leigh Dyrda! Leigh (she/her) is an academic whose research interests include EcoGothic, a field that probes the eerie overlap of ecocriticism and Gothic. We figured Leigh would be a perfect guest to dig into this show about alien-human hybrids, monsters that defy taxonomical definition, a...

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Another Material Concerns episode — this time with a cold open! Because why not? In this episode, we begin with a check in, jump into Oops All Oops and end with a new segment — Patreon Party! It's a ball!


Head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease to listen to Part II featuring Okay, Hear Me Out and Coach makes Marcelle and Hannah do some improv! For as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and p...

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September 30, 2025 51 mins

Sometimes an episode is such a longtime coming that the enthusiasm from our hosts is palpable! Such is the case with this episode about The Simpsons, a TV show that pervaded Marcelle's childhood due in part to...you guessed it... syndication! In this episode, Marcelle reminds the audience how television worked before streaming and the nature of syndication. Together, she and Hannah think through the influence of The Simpsons' first...

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September 23, 2025 35 mins

We check in for 20 minutes and for that, we're sorry! We follow our check-in with a quick Apocalypse Toolkit and then leave the rest of the segments (Creature Report, How the Sausage is Getting Made, and Voice Memo Dispatch) to Part II over on Patreon!


Head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease to listen! For as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and part two of all Material Concerns episodes...

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In this episode, we're talking about beloved computer game, The Sims, with special guest Ruth Ormiston. Ruth (they/them) is a book designer and cultural worker with an MA in English Literature from the University of Victoria (where they specialized in late-nineteenth-century children’s publishing) and a Master of Publishing from Simon Fraser University. And they're a fan of The Sims.


Released 25 years ago, the game has seen...

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Another Material Concerns featuring Consumer Retorts and Oops All Oops! And some light panic from the team. We're fineeeeee!


Head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease to listen to Part II. For as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog of content and part two of all Material Concerns episodes! Go to patreon.com/ohwitchplease now to join a tier that works for your budget!


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Music Credits:

“Shopping Mal...

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September 2, 2025 66 mins

Jordan Peele's Get Out is a masterpiece both firmly planted in the rich tradition of horror and at the forefront of the growing genre of new Black horror. As auditors of the zeitgeist, we simply had to talk about the splash it made in 2017 and the conversation around its legacy since. In this episode we consider what made the narrative so impactful and we take a closer look at its reception by white audiences and critics who were p...

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This week on Material Concerns Hannah, Marcelle and Coach start with a sweet little check in, including Hannah's ideal way to start the day, a Pitt update from Marcelle, and some very exciting creative news from Coach. Then Coach leads a "Left on the Table" segment that turns into an impromptu Coach's Corner. And to finish off part one, the trio each gets a minute for their "Okay, Hear Me Out" segment, in which cases are made for: ...

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August 19, 2025 74 mins

We're finally talking about Hamilton! It's been ten years since the show premiered on Broadway and that's just enough time to have some perspective on its lasting impact. For this episode, we had to bring on previous guest and brilliant academic, Shira Lurie (who joined us on Witch, Please for Book 7, Ep. 2). As an expert in American History, Shira helps Hannah and Marcelle explore "Hamilton" as a reflection of the Obama era's rhet...

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Hannah, Marcelle and Coach are back together for a Material Concerns episode featuring Consumer Retorts and Creature Report! They talk The Pitt, heat waves. sloths, queer t-shirts, homemade ice cream, Labubus, being a good friend, and the power of eating carrots for the first time. Happy listening!


Head to Patreon.com/ohwitchplease to listen to Part II. For as little as $54/year, you'll get ad-free episodes, bloopers, a backlog ...

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August 5, 2025 65 mins

We're back from our summer break with an episode about The Hunger Games. Heads up that this episode connects the fictional world of Panem to real-world issues of representation and human rights, drawing parallels between the text and the genocide in Gaza. In this conversation, Hannah and Marcelle dig into representations of violence, resistance movements, and the normalization of child death. They then explore how Suzanne Collins' ...

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We have a treat for you today with a drop-in episode from Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study. Culture Study is a podcast about the culture that surrounds you. This episode featuring Hannah and Marcelle is all about Royal Family gossip, colonialism, and empires in decline! Together, Anne, Hannah and Marcelle consider how royal fascination manifests differently depending on where you live, how you were raised, and identification (or...

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