Did You Do Your Homework? | A Pop Culture Podcast

It's a brand new episode of Love YA! Things start out a little rocky because Maren and Martha both needed their coffee, but we get rolling pretty quick. We're here to discuss the book-to-film adaptation A Wrinkle in Time.

Pete and Martha take their jobs as educators seriously, which is why they've committed themselves to beefing up their own education on the systemic racism and racial experiences of BIPOC in America. Listen to their discussion on what they're consuming and how they're recommending materials to the people they work with and for. Also: Black Lives Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter, and All Cops are Bad. Just, you know, for emphasis.

Sorry for the late ep! Martha and Maren watch and mostly enjoy the 2018 based-on-real-people skateboarding adventure Skate Kitchen. Check out their real life counterparts on Instagram!

On May 31 and June 1, 1921, white residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma descended on the Greenwood District of Tulsa. This district, colloquially referred to as Black Wall Street, was a prosperous district populated by mostly black residents due to Tulsa's harsh segregation laws. The massacre was instigated by the alleged assault on a white woman by 19 year old Dick Rowland, and by the end, an as-yet-unnamed number of people were killed. Original death reports numbered 36; it is likely hundreds of people were killed in the mob violence. The Tulsa Massacre is also the opening sequence of the 2019 HBO series Watchmen, a sequel to the 1986 comic series by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, originally adapted to film in 2009 by Zach Snyder. Pete and Martha get into all three stories, touching on Watchmen's original thesis statements and how Damon Lindelof has made it particularly resonant to us today.

It's a throwback episode this week on Love YA, with Maren and Martha digging up the 2003 "gem" What A Girl Wants. We discuss Amanda Bynes' ouvre, the highs and lows of this early aughts film, and Colin Firth's distressing lack of shirtlessness.

In an effort to make sense of *all of this*, Pete and Martha take a crack at The Great Influenza, the 2004 examination of the Spanish Flu by John M. Barry. Additional reading: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/americas-response-to-coronavirus-pandemic-is-incomprehensibly-incoherent-says-historian-who-studied-the-1918-flu/2020/05/22/1906391a-7b53-11ea-b6ff-597f170df8f8_story.html

We have a brand new one for you! The Half of It is a brand spanking new Netflix Original, written and directed by Alice Wu and starring Leah Lewis, Daniel Diemer, and Alexxis Lemire.

Pete and Martha do a deep dive on one story: The Big Short, the 2010 expose of the 2007 financial crisis that was then adapted into the lightly fictionalized 2015 film directed by Adam McKay. We get mad! You should too!

We take a break from streaming originals to watch Olivia Wilde's 2019 girl-centric comedy Book Smart, which Maren has never seen! Did she like it? Listen to find out...

Why exactly do we find underdog sports stories so captivating? It's lowkey Martha's favorite genre of movie, and Pete still finds a way of subverting the assignment for his own purposes. The homework for the episode: Moneyball (2011, dir. Bennett Miller) and Miracle (2004, dir. Gavin O'Connor).

Hey, the sound quality of this one sucks and we're sorry! We debated not posting it, but the chances of us being able to re-record it are pretty much none, so here it is with caveats. Something funky is going on with Maren's audio, and hopefully this won't be true in the next ep. Anyway, we discuss the big budget flick The Space Between Us, which wasn't based on a YA boo but sure does feel like it!

We take a look at how characters in film deal with isolation, since, you know, we're all in that boat. Spoiler alert: some people handle it NOT WELL. Homework for the episode: The Thing (dir. John Carpenter) and Moon (dir. Duncan Jones)

Good morning! Maren and Martha are back to help ease your mind and guide you through these wild teen rom com waters. Today, we're discussing the Netflix offering Be Somebody.

It's the flipside to our last episode! Pete and Martha bring you a few choice pieces of media to help us all process the pandemic and our personal quarantines. Homework for the episode: Kingdom of Needle and Bone by Mira Grant, and the 2011 Steven Soderbergh film Contagion.

We're back! With a movie that we certainly watched with our own eyeballs! Today Maren and Martha are discussing the 2016 Australian movie, Emo: The Musical.

We're back! Sorry for the unintentional hiatus. The world has been kind of a lot for the last few months, and it hasn't been great for our (Martha) brains. But we've confabbed and reformatted some things, and now we are here again for you in these trying times. Pete and Martha tell you what they've been consuming to keep themselves sane and calm, bring you some recommendations, and let you know what the podcast will look like moving into the future. Twitter accounts to check out: https://twitter.com/shedd_aquarium https://twitter.com/FieldMuseum https://twitter.com/ncwhm For next episode:

It's back, baybee! Maren and Martha get to take a breather from the chaff and get into the much-anticipated sequel to To All The Boys I've Loved Before. Is it as good as the first one? Probably not! Did we still have fun watching? You betcha.

First, hear Martha's hilariously misguided predictions for the ceremony. Then, hear Pete, Martha and return guest Lizzie Meyer discuss the ceremony. We chat about the relevancy of the awards, the hits and misses, and how happy we are for Parasite.

Disclaimer: neither Maren nor Martha harbors any ill will towards One Direction, fanfiction, or the creators and fans thereof. They do, however, harbor a great deal of ill will towards themselves for making each other watch this movie.

Joel Kenyon, podcast extraordinaire, joins us once more for an in-depth look at international film and American adaptations. We achieve a surprising amount of parity on opinions for the materials at hand! Homework for the episode: Let The Right One In (2008, dir. Tomas Alfredson); Let Me In (2010, dir. Matt Reeves); Shall We Dance? (1996, dir. Masayuki Suo), Shall We Dance? (2004, dir. Peter Chelsom); Shadow (2018, dir. Yimou Zhang) Find Joel on 40 Going on 14 and the Sunshine Happy Kpants Hour! https://www.talkshoe.com/show/40-going-on-14 https://www.talkshoe.com/show/the-sunshine-happy-kpants-hour