The Young Jedi Knights Club

Celebrate Star Wars Day by simulating the experience of watching Episode VI with two pals who won't stop talking over the movie! Our Special-Edition-inspired commentary covers everything from the Mighty Boushh to blinking Ewoks to the novelization by James Kahn (not James Caan). An entire LEGION of our best ideas for superfluous revisions awaits you!

As the Dark Nest draws to a close and Luke Skywalker finishes watching Revenge of the Sith, the cry-curious Nate Tapp rounds out his trio of guest spots by tripling down on trilogy talk with us. Does The Swarm War warrant three hearty throat-clicks, or do we discard it like Huttwash (and if we discard, do we add two Swarm cards that cost 0 to our hand)?

Tibanna tapper Nate Tapp taps back in for a bantha-sized, hubba-shaped debate over whether the second Dark Nest novel satisfies like a delicious slice of live action pizza or gets more muddled than nebular miasma. The real plot twist, however, is that we stop kriffing around and finally reveal that this whole Young Jedi Knights Club thing has just been a backdoor Lost podcast the whole time...

Clad in our classiest Killik silks, we walk the wax carpet for the gala that's even goofier than the Golden Globes... the 4th Annual Lowie Awards! Join us Joiners in raising a collectible McDonald's Batman Forever glass to toast the pop culture from the year of our lord Two Thousand and Twenty Four, not to mention our Lord Nyax, Emperox of Bad Boys...  

Rub your forearms together for the kingly Nate Tapp, who joins our hive mind as the podcast enters its insectoid era all about Troy Denning's Dark Nest trilogy! Grab a can of gelmeat and an orb of membrosia for an episode that's crawling with conversation about audiobook omissions, thorny throuples, and a Prime Unu who may have violated the Prime Directive... 

After nineteen novels, we wistfully turn the page on the New Jedi Order with an all-encompassing retrospective! It might as well be the Day of Comprehending the Will of the Gods... or at least of the Master Shapers behind this ambitious series, who we applaud for challenging our emotions, expanding our perception of the Force, and burning into our brains an entire lexicon of unforgettable Vong-cabulary words.

Prime guest Jake Beal reveals himself as the true Supreme Overlord of the podcast, reunifying with us for the New Jedi Order's colossal conclusion. It's the end of an era, and things get downright mythic as we wreath through weighty topics like Yuuzhan Vong theology, traumatic time jumps in the TV show ReBoot, and the (best ever?) Christmas of 2003. There might even be a few surprise gifts from Shimrra Claus himself...

The podcast interdicts huttoad Eric Ambler for the not-quite-final Final Prophecy, which sets the table for the endgame of the New Jedi Order. This snackquarium of an episode is swimming with delicacies, as we follow Nen Yim on a trip to Qahsa Bonita, drop an unusual amount of Search for Spock references, and decide which is better: Seal IV or SEAL Team Six?

Reunited once again with Jack Stovold of "Jack's Silly Little JackCast," we transmit our final Zonama Sethoughts via telemetry on the Force Heretic trilogy as a whole... or die trying. Added ingredients in this Esfandia-like atmospheric soup of an episode include the punting of pirates, an amalgamation of Anakins, and a Who's Who of heretics with the hots for Nom Anor!

Future host of "The LizardCast" Jack Stovold (what an Earth ass name...) helps us decide if this middle chapter of the Heretic trilogy is a first-rate tour de Force or merely an inconsequential side mission. Similar to Tahiri's recurring reptilian nightmares, we also receive disturbing visions of Borgs Bunny, living turntable creatures, and thought experiments involving Haley Joel Osment... 

Jack Stovold of "The HapeCast" rejoins us to kick off the New Jedi Order's first and only trilogy, in which the prominence of our old pal Pellaeon has got us all pumped! We also ponder how healthy it is to identify with the self-loathing Nom Anor, confuse Shanghai Noon with Shanghai Knights, and show some love for the Arnold Schwarzenegger of Hip Hop.

Ryan Davis crabs his jouncing fighter into the money lane with us to discuss one of the best Star Wars ensemble books yet in an episode that's sure to do sellout business in jig time! Along the Way, we stop off on Planet Greg, try our best to think of some small-beaked birds, and commiserate over the sad life of a Kingdom Hearts fan.

Ensnaring EU enthusiast Derek Lavender in the belly of the beast, we gorge on the deliciously flowery prose and philosophical richness of Matthew Stover's Traitor. This logic puzzle of a novel refreshingly expands the Force beyond the black-and-white binary typically depicted, and also serves as a poignant reminder of how much has been lost and changed since the halcyon days of the Young Jedi Knights books.  

A long-forgotten experiment awakens to wreak havoc upon the Vong-infested surface of Coruscant. Does Aaron Allston's experiment in NJO storytelling deserve to be forgotten too, or is there a place for Lord Nyax's brand of monster-of-the-week thrills? Completing our A-Team once again is Geoff Clarke, who's here to help us decide, as well as to debate the nadir of Star Wars cinema and the correct pronunciation of Hapan royalty.  

Another May the Fourth, another Special-est Edition commentary episode! One in which we try our best to rein in our rampant positivity and propose as many gratuitous "improvements" as possible to an all time favorite film, The Empire Strikes Back! Hear us also posit how George Lucas' history of revisionism primed us for the horrors of artificial intelligence...  

Aaron Allston brings big Wraith Squadron energy to the New Jedi Order, and proves that actually explaining the politics of a Resistance in Star Wars is quality matériel, not something JJ Abrams should have reduced to ejecta! Our Canuck co-pilot Geoff Clarke rejoins the podcast's Inner Circle, so naturally we cook up some more CanCon conversation, including what constitutes the layers of a Hayden Christensen sandwich...

Time to flaunt that vonduun crab formalwear for the 3rd Annual Lowies! Or is their proper name the Praxeum Awards? Either way, the Lowbaccademy gives one final, bittersweet send-off to our beloved 90s and reevaluates the Oscar winners from the turn of the millennium before honoring the best of Star Wars in 2023!

This is a (Snapple Real) Fact: We're just living in a post-Star-by-Star world. Our buddy Barm begrudgingly embarks on another dark journey to Hapes with us for the Star Wars equivalent of a YA "romantasy." Whether that makes for a good book is HOTLY debated... Like, thinly veiled Reylo fanfic hot. 

NJO diehard Morgan Lavender links up with our battle meld to discuss gut-wrenching character deaths, dances with the dark side, and the oppressive sense of dread that permeates Troy Denning's tragic tome. Despite all that negatude, we at least find glimmers of fun in welcoming back ALL our favorite Young Jedi Knights and celebrating the DVD release of The Mummy Returns!

What child is this? The Babe, the Son of Mara! The New Jedi Order shepherds in a miraculous birth just in time for another giant-sized Christmas special! Sam's brother Jack Stovold makes this a festive family reunion filled with the Givin' of gifts, the holiday highlights of 2001, and of course the evergreen podcast fodder that is Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. 

CanCon connoisseur Geoff Clarke genuflects with us before author Greg Keyes, who keys into the precise kind of New Jedi Order entry we've been demanding: an intimate character study with a healthy dose of sympathetic Vong (sorry, Yuuzhan Vong) to root for. It's also a surprising love letter to those Junior Jedi Knights children's books... with added violence and despair!

Slip on your most ghoulish gablith masquer for a Young Jedi Knights Club Spooktacular! Hear us conjure up our favorite frights from the year 2000, revel in Kathy Tyers' wicked character work, and determine the "Halloweeniest" moments of Balance Point, whatever the stang that means... Just don't let a whisperkit cross your path!

The Agents of Chaos duology concludes in a plate-spinning yarn dripping with Hutt Stuff and a side of Jedi-smothered hash browns. Eric Ambler snaps on a slap-bracelet-like amphistaff and boards the matte black Falcon to help us grapple with the inhumanity of superweapons, both in the real world and in this book, as we guess who or what threatens to eclipse the Jedi...

Han gets the Solo adventure we've been craving, but more importantly, for a page or two, we get to welcome back our favorite forsaken Young Jedi Knights! Agent of chaos Barm returns to the podcast for more "Stephen King bullsh*t," real talk about the art-life balance, and an appraisal of James Luceno's reference-heavy style of worldbuilding. Don't forget to stick around after the credits for a very important string cheese incident!

The Seanslaught continues... Sean Davis rejoins us for the Embrace of Pain as the tide of this duology takes an especially dark and ruinous turn. He also details a firsthand account of the pop culture event of 2000: his high school graduation! Fitting, given the motif of universities in these last few books, a sign that our Young Jedi Knights have advanced to the next phase of their education in the New Jedi Order.

Emperor's black bones! It's about time we finally read another New Jedi Order book! Sean Davis returns to the club to break all the rules of the Memory Archive, touching on everything from “hate picks” to the hot s**t of February Y2K. The Yuuzhan Vong War rages on, but the true onslaught might just be The Bad Touch vs. the Thong Song…

In the tradition of superfluous revisions to the original trilogy, we provide our own feature-length commentary suggesting even more changes to A New Hope, Special Edition style! Watch along and hear us try to maintain a facade of sarcasm for two whole hours as we propose cramming as many prequel references, CGI stand-ins, and dewbacks as possible into an already perfect movie.

Detouring away from the New Jedi Order novels, we take the plunge into two volumes of a comic book arc that (barely) includes a few of our favorite Young Jedi Knights! Despite some Invasion-related communications disruptions, Brian Rudloff returns to the podcast to worship the satanic content of 2009 and 2010, learn about the ORIGINAL Finn, and debate whether we needed to read these comics at all...

Don your finest ooglith cloaker for another walk down the ginger fur carpet... it's the 2nd Annual Lowie Awards! In this very specific, literature-leaning, Star Wars-centric version of the Oscars, we completely reject the Academy's definition of Adapted Screenplay and continue to revel in our favorite year of 1997 before everything just devolves into an all-out Andor lovefest! 

Hi kids! Do you like Primus? Want to hear about Yuuzhan Vong body horror and learn what Vector Prime is? If so, listen along as NEW guest Jake Beal wades into the NEW Jedi Order with us, gushing over Zelda along the way while we debate how this NEW series serves as a continuation of the Young Jedi Knights novels. 

We finally graduate from the Praxeum, closing the chapter on the Young Jedi Knights books. This skra'akan-sized retrospective evaluates the entire series, from Heirs of the Force (no, not Heirs TO the Force) through Crisis at Crystal Reef, with a bonus Graduation Day epilogue to boot! Like Jaina Solo considering her postgraduate future, we also look ahead to what's next for the podcast...

It's Christmas on Crystal Reef as the heroes find themselves at the North Pole on Mon Calamari for one last adventure! Melissa Thiede boards this holiday train to dredge up traumatic memories of moving abroad on Christmas Day with nothing but a Giga Pet on her back, to clarify several character name pronunciations, and to evaluate the final novel's success as a series conclusion (as well as its Myers-Briggs personality type).

Blaster bolts, it's the penultimate book in the series! The kids head to Bespin to test out Lando's new theme park, only to be reminded that Cloud City brings bad things in the middle act of a trilogy... The ApeCast's Geoff Clarke helps spruce things up with a trunk full of tree puns and a lesson in Canadian currency before we get musical, touching on every timbre from phat nu metal to the sweet jizz of Clak'dor VII.

Expanded Universe expert Derek Lavender returns to Ord Mantell with us for perhaps the darkest Young Jedi Knights novel yet, rife with space mines, spice lines, and war crimes! To lighten things up, we also review 1998's memorable additions to Disney Parks, compare knaars to Godzilla babies, and wonder what's up with that black sun on the book's cov- ohhhhhh, now I get it.

As the Young Jedi Knights conclude their arc with the Diversity Alliance, hurtling ever closer toward the series finale, Jack Stovold stops by to reassure us that perception is an illusion and time isn't real. We also find solace in guessing the Top 10 Comic Book Villains of 1998 and films in which Affleck was the bomb, but mostly in cool aliens wielding lightsabers!

Our heroes brave Ryloth's bipolar extremes to rescue Lowbacca from the indoctrination of the Diversity Alliance, but all we can seem to talk about is (Extreme! Extreme!) Extreme Dinosaurs! We also manage to squeeze in a useful mnemonic device to identify stalactites vs. stalagmites, reminisce about formative behind-the-scenes guidebooks, and (finally) finish those Junior Jedi Knights novels!

The Young Jedi Knights continue battling bounty hunters in their search for missing Thuls while guest Ryan Davis joins us on the Highway to the Dengar Zone. Strap into your crash webbing as we turn a Hype Williams-style fisheye lens toward the highlights of July 1997, wonder why aliens would call themselves aliens, and grapple with the uncomfortable allure of hot centauriforms...

It's finally time to check back in with the ongoing search for Bornan Thul, plus the new and improved adventures of Anakin Solo! In this shagadelic, semi-charmed kind of episode, we question our 10-year-old taste in birthday party activities, bemoan the codification of floating heads, and try to predict whether this Diversity Alliance arc will ultimately prove problematic or land on an antiracist message. 

The midpoint of the Young Jedi Knights novels coincided with the release of the 1997 Special Editions and the return of Star Wars to the zeitgeist. In this extra Special bonus episode, we revisit the hype by dusting off our kid's meal toys and commemorative magazines from yesteryear, debating the ethics of revising cinematic history, and even pitching our own "tweaks" to the Saga!

While on a quest to find an emotionally significant gift for Leia, the Young Jedi Knights encounter an iconic bounty hunter! And as we go back to 1997 for this new arc of the series, we encounter a bounty of iconic pop culture from silly martial arts comedies to emotionally significant magazines. We also touch on our Ring Theory theories, marvel at the lung capacity of Kenny G, and ask why on Ennth anyone would choose to live on Ennth!

File into the Grand Temple for our inaugural Lowie Awards, the prestigious medal ceremony where we reveal favorite reads of the previous year, reimagine a few Oscar categories from the mid-90s, and recap the pop culture highlights of 2021. It took some stretching, but we even found some ways to relate it to Star Wars!

Just as Jaina Solo commandeers an enemy TIE Fighter in the epic final battle against the Shadow Academy, Eric Ambler of What Were We Watching? skyjacks the podcast to explain the history of aircraft piracy. We also find time to honor the late Dave Wolverton's contributions to Young Jedi Knights lore, gush over all things Nintendo 64, and much, much more!

Marvel Star Wars Explorer Brian Rudloff flies with us to Kashyyyk for the Lowbacca-centric novel we've been waiting for (but not the one we deserve) ...Darkest Knight. Hear us highlight scene-stealing Imperial Guards, bond over PC cartoon studio programs, and consider how book five compares to the comedy classic Bio-Dome!

It's time for the Young Jedi Knights to construct their own lightsabers, and for our good friend Barm to join us in assessing the emotional highs and lows of the fourth chapter of the series! We even break down saber color symbolism, but not before tangents into the oeuvre of Stephen King, gender politics in modern literature, and the enduring appeal of Jim Carrey... 

We spend our winter holiday much like the Young Jedi Knights in this book, reconnecting with a childhood friend who may turn out to be more naughty than nice...  Old pal Sean Davis guides us deep into the undercity of Coruscant for an expansive discussion of what topped our Christmas lists back in 1995, to rejoice in the introduction of new character Zekk, and to unwrap a diplomatic banquet of other seasonal surprises waiting under the Life Day tree!

Like the miners of GemDiver Station, we dive into this gem of a novel as the Solo twins are kidnapped and enlisted in a school for Dark Jedi! Hear us wax nostalgic about some fun Fall TV premieres of 1995, check in on the adventures of Anakin Solo, and ponder what exactly Shadow Academy is foreshadowing...

It's the Solo twins' first solo adventure, and the first proper episode of this podcast! Guest Nate Tapp brings his English teacher's analysis to this (sacred?) Jedi text, as we discuss all its Harry Potter vibes, fondly recall the big media blitzes of June 1995, and wonder aloud what shaved Wookiees look like...

Cam and Sam kick off the podcast by diving into their favorite literature, explaining what listeners can expect from the show each month, going on brief Dune tangents, and ranking Star Wars! Ranking ALL the Star Wars.