Podcast appearances and mentions of allegra frank

On today's episode, Candice Lim is joined by Vox's Alex Abad-Santos and The Atlantic's Allegra Frank to celebrate ICYMI's fourth annual Friendsgiving episode. They run down the internet moments that made them laugh out loud this year, such as the highs and lows of ClubChalamet, the Madame Web of it all, and horny TikToks. This podcast is produced by Se'era Spragley Ricks, Daisy Rosario and Candice Lim, with production assistance from Alexandra Botti. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, Candice Lim is joined by Vox's Alex Abad-Santos and The Atlantic's Allegra Frank to celebrate ICYMI's fourth annual Friendsgiving episode. They run down the internet moments that made them laugh out loud this year, such as the highs and lows of ClubChalamet, the Madame Web of it all, and horny TikToks. This podcast is produced by Se'era Spragley Ricks, Daisy Rosario and Candice Lim, with production assistance from Alexandra Botti. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, Candice Lim is joined by Vox's Alex Abad-Santos and The Atlantic's Allegra Frank to celebrate ICYMI's fourth annual Friendsgiving episode. They run down the internet moments that made them laugh out loud this year, such as the highs and lows of ClubChalamet, the Madame Web of it all, and horny TikToks. This podcast is produced by Se'era Spragley Ricks, Daisy Rosario and Candice Lim, with production assistance from Alexandra Botti. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, Candice Lim is joined by Vox's Alex Abad-Santos and The Atlantic's Allegra Frank to celebrate ICYMI's fourth annual Friendsgiving episode. They run down the internet moments that made them laugh out loud this year, such as the highs and lows of ClubChalamet, the Madame Web of it all, and horny TikToks. This podcast is produced by Se'era Spragley Ricks, Daisy Rosario and Candice Lim, with production assistance from Alexandra Botti. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By Walt HickeyWelcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.This week, I spoke to Julia Alexander, digital strategy consultant and author of the new blog Posting Nexus.Julia's brilliant, she's been one of the most insightful and compelling minds on attention — where we allocate it, how we measure that, and what becomes of that — for several years now, and when I learned about this new project I was incredibly excited to get her on a Sunday edition to hear more about what's got her, well, attention. We spoke about the incentive structures of the internet, attention as digital currency, and how online trends redefine culture.Alexander can be found on X and Threads, and the project is Posting NexusThis interview has been condensed and edited. Julia Alexander, thank you so much for coming on.Thank you for having me. What an honor.It's always great to talk to you. I've been a fan of your work for a long time, and whether it was your independent newsletter or this new thing, it is always really, really fun to talk to you about what people are consuming and watching and reading and seeing.Thank you, I appreciate it.I wanted to talk about Posting Nexus. It's a new project that you are launching and it is a really fascinating dive into attention and essentially how it has become commoditized, how we use it on the internet, and where it goes. Just to back out a bit, can you tell me a little about why you wanted to go in this direction and start this thing up?Posting Nexus came out of this obsession I have with understanding why people do what they do on the internet and how that affects what they do or don't do off the internet. I now work at Disney, and we won't get into any of that, unfortunately, but a large part of my career was spent looking at the development of the streaming industry and the reality that people's attention was moving away from these closed-circuit traditional distributors to more open-circuit digital distributors who were operating at a pace that was almost relentless, and that was in large part because the attention we gave to digital services was relentless. When I moved into Disney, it didn't stop me thinking a lot about why people do things, where they give attention, and what they want out of attention.So, I decided to launch Posting Nexus, which is me and a few friends who are doing this, edited by the brilliant Allegra Frank until someone very smartly hires her full time. As I say in the intro, it's not a newsletter, it's not a blog, it's kind of just a harbor for thoughts about a lot of this stuff. It really came out of this idea that you can boil down a lot of what people want and where they decide to give their attention into a matrix that I call the IPA matrix, which has nothing to do with beer. It has everything to do with identity, platforms and attention, and when you take those three circles and you put them into a Venn diagram, you get incentive structures and quite often hidden incentive structures. These exist for both the bottom up, so that's us doing things on the internet, and the top down, which are these massive conglomerates who build things on the internet.A great example would be when we look at something like Barbenheimer, which was effectively just an offline manifestation of online attention. Part of the reason that movie did as well as it did is because it leaned into the idea that my identity, which is formed by my interests and the platforms where I socialize, where I'm getting my social capital, and the attention that I receive for participating in this culture then create an incentive structure for me to go out and participate in something in order to post.My general theory on a lot of the tension now is that you give attention in order to receive attention, and through the democratization of a lot of the stuff that we do, we've made it much easier to receive attention by giving attention. I think that constant focus on receiving attention by giving attention leads to this kind of posting nexus.I am very interested in this, just as you are, and our jobs touch on this a bit. You saw it with the technology of film. Charlie Chaplin used to be able to do three shows a night and hit three audiences, and the technology of film made it so that he could be in every cinema in North America, if not further. It seems like what we've had recently is the next advance of that, so now all those audiences within those audiences can entertain each other as well. It's fundamentally inverted a lot of where we gather our attention from and how we disperse it, to the extent that I think it does terrify some people. I would love your thoughts on how this very unique moment we find ourselves in makes this such a fun topic to go into.What's really fascinating is that what's underlying this entire structure is the idea that growth is the end state, that growth is the final destination, and if that is the final destination then there's no real final point. If we think about that in terms of your own life, if you're listening to this, maybe you're a writer and your end point is a book, or you want to write a novel. If you're working within a large company, maybe your end point is CEO or vice president. There actually is an end point.When we think about the way our lives are constructed, which are intrinsically more digital than they are physical at this point, there is no end point. The numbers on your follower count continue to go up and your value, you as a person, is intrinsically tied to making those numbers go up, which means you create labor for companies effectively for free, right? There's this idea that if you do it enough, some offline benefits will occur. If you're an influencer, maybe you'll get a free trip to Rome; if you're a poet, maybe you'll get a book deal out of it. There's this incentive to continue creating free labor for these conglomerates.But if you're the conglomerate — and this is what I like to spend a lot of time on in Posting Nexus. It's not just why we do what we do, it's how are we incentivized by companies that are then incentivized by their own ambitions. If you look at what they've started to realize, it's that they've run out of space to grow, and by space I mean they've literally run out of people. They cannot reach any more people than they're going to reach. If the planet is the best example of finiteness, that's where they are, but they're designed to incentivize growth, so what do they do?If you're on Instagram, all of a sudden you're posting photos, but have you thought about posting a video on this new form of entertainment called Reels? If you're on YouTube, it's Shorts, and if you are an Uber customer because you love taking cars somewhere, have you considered getting your food via Uber? It's finding different ways to capture more slices of pie within someone's attention based on the necessities of their life.Getting into the mixture of business strategy and cognitive behavioral reasoning really starts to help us illustrate why we do what we do on the internet. What I want to do with Posting Nexus quite a bit, and maybe this is going to sound a little naive or a little childish, but I want to figure out a way for us to build a better internet that we understand.If we know that we do this for Facebook, that might not stop us from posting because we like to connect with our friends. Or on Twitter, I like to post to get likes because I am also addicted to the dopamine rush from when we do those things. But if we intrinsically understand that what we're doing is operating within this growth state and we want to get to a steady state where actually just the right level of attention and just the right level of input is going to provide a much happier and a much more mentally healthy lifestyle, how do we get there by working on what we can do and what we can control versus what we can't do?I want to dive into so much from there, just because you hit on something really interesting that got me thinking. There are basically 330 million Americans and there are 24 hours in a day, so that's essentially 8 billion hours that you can have from America. That is the total addressable American time.I think what you're getting at is that we are brushing up on that; there's a point at which growth really can maximize. Let's say you've got 2 billion hours for sleep in the aggregate, and another 4 billion hours for work. We are getting to the total addressable market of American time if we really think that growth is the only way to go about it. I would love for you to speak more to that element of it, because that was really interesting.I think about this joke from a few years ago that you'll remember. The prompt for the joke is that at one point, Netflix's former CEO, Reed Hastings, said “Our only competition is sleep,” and then a few years later, the Pokémon company came out with Pokémon Sleep. All of a sudden it was like, well, Pokémon figured out how to beat sleep. The eight hours a day you actually don't have my attention, finally they figured out a way to get into it. It almost feels matrix-y, right? It feels very dystopian.The thing about growth is that we don't talk a lot about cost. A great example of this comes from this great economist, Herman Daly, who died in 2022. He pointed out that GDP is a really weird factor of just looking at the economic value of a country. It's the growth of product, and when we look at the growth of product, it's been 50 times what it was 50, 60 years ago — in large part because of private companies, because of Reagan economics, you can get into a whole economic debate about it. We don't talk about the cost, both of resources and of time and health that go into creating that product. And if we look at the cost, actually, is it a net benefit or is it a net consequence?Attention by nature plays on two core strings: It plays on how I view myself and my value, which is then the attention I want, and it plays into where I know I can get that attention, and right now that's platforms. It used to be that your growth was in a very limited base. Your growth was in a group of friends, at a company, maybe on your soccer team. There was a very limited group where you had tangible benefit or tangible consequence. Both are good, depending on the attention you sought out.When we add in platforms and the ability to go and seek that out, tie what you know works to your identity, and take in all of this dopamine as well as all of this increased anxiety, when we have that playing out the same time you see third-party spaces disappear so people are not spending as much time with each other in real life, what you get is this growth that's going to end in total, not just disruption, but total destruction for a lot of people. You cannot keep going this way. It used to be, to your point exactly, Walt, that you would stop for eight hours to sleep, and now you stop for six hours to sleep. Or you would go to bed with a book and now instead you go to bed with your Twitter feed.We haven't given ourselves a chance to recover from the trauma of the last decade, especially the last five years. We've been running nonstop ever since basically the invention of the internet, but really the launch of the app store. We've been in this moment for the last 15, 16 years, and at some point, the speed we're running at — the necessity for growth, which is just finding ways to take more of your attention, more of your free labor, and create something out of that and ask you to keep sticking with companies — is going to run out.What I really want to try and figure out with Posting Nexus is where is the health, the net benefit? The net benefit is socialization, it's communication, it's connectivity. That is a net benefit. It's entertainment — entertainment is a net connectivity. We have more democratization of creators, which means we have more voices, which means we have more points of view. That's a net positive.It was a net positive for publishing back in 2010. You were getting stories on maybe Gawker or HuffPost or BuzzFeed that you were not going to get in The New York Times. It didn't mean that one was less valuable; it just meant there was a different POV that the democratization of publishing allowed for. But at some point when everyone had an opinion, when everybody was publishing and Google didn't know how to rank it, you lost authority and you got more disinformation. That became a really bad thing.With Posting Nexus, the underlying point is that we have such finite attention to give, even though it's sold to us as an infinite level of attention. We have a finite level of attention we can receive, even though we're told it's an infinite level of attention, and if we keep striving for growth, growth, growth, eventually you create a world that is unsustainable. With Posting Nexus, it's effectively an equation: How much can you do for net positive before you do too much and tip over into net consequence?That's such a good point, that from the perspective of the companies, they're arguing that growth could continue indefinitely. We can always make more money, but time is definitionally the one thing that you can't make more of.That's the thing with Posting Nexus that's really fun. For people who might not know my background, I started as a blogger for Vox Media, Polygon, The Verge, and then I went into being a strategy consultant, which was great. Recently, I wrote for a publication called Puck and there was a column dedicated to streaming, what was happening with streaming, and trends that were happening with streaming, which was, to your point, effectively an attention story. It was “YouTube is taking attention away,” that kind of story.What I've missed is this idea of being able to have thoughts longer than a tweet and put them somewhere. For example, we've got a bunch of really interesting stories coming out with Posting Nexus. We're looking at the value of The New York Times in 2024, kind of tied around a lot of the Biden coverage before he stepped down. We've got things on decreases in posting and how social media platforms turn into entertainment platforms and what does that mean for how we approach them.We also have really funny things, like a piece on how J.D. Vance as the first main character candidate was always going to happen because he's the first VP candidate ever who has an online history, like in terms of actually posting when he was 20. That's something we've only really seen with influencers over the last decade, and seeing how they've gone through it gets us to this moment where we can inevitably see where Vance goes.So we've got a lot of really fun stuff, but it all plays into this idea that we give our attention to things and our attention rewards through monetary incentives. Both Walt and I have worked in digital media, and when you give the attention to people, it then gives them a monetization pathway, and that's the number one incentive structure. If we think about how we give attention, how we then better focus that attention on something where we know the end result actually is a fiscal reward for a lot of companies or creators, how does that change the way we operate on the internet? And how does it change the way we want to receive some of those benefits, if that's something we want to do?We're getting into a world where your level of posting is the only growth that people have left to chase. This is all these companies have: that you're spending your time consuming Instagram stories. We need you to post in DMs because we know that's where you're spending time because the future of the internet is much smaller. We need you to create a post in a DM that steals from a post that's in your feed in order for us to then serve your data. There's all of that. People intrinsically know this.The New York Times? Our mutual friend, Ryan Broderick. Casey Newton, who writes Platformer. They are very good at writing about this. What I want to get at is the underlying incentive structures that we don't always talk about that are inherently tied to everything you do. If we break that apart, both from a strategic standpoint and a psychological standpoint, how do we better understand the internet that we are helping to create?This has reminded me of genuinely one of the first conversations that we had, which was us talking about Wattpad. A few weeks ago they IPO'd, and I think they still remain an incredibly interesting company. It just grounds some of these headier ideas we're talking about. Wattpad is a good example of a company that became a very wealthy company and a very valuable company because of the broad, dispersed labor of a lot of other people.Wattpad is a great example. I will say in full transparency, I do own shares in Wattpad. I went in when they were public, and this is not financial advice. I think those are the two disclaimers I have to have.Wattpad's very interesting. Wattpad — which is now Webtoon. They merged with a South Korean online comic company a few years ago — existed as a place where people could go and upload their fiction, often a lot of fan fiction. You had 14-year-olds writing stories for other people on the internet. What was interesting about Wattpad was that when it started around 2010, it was one of the first mobile app success stories. It worked because of the iPhone and Androids.You had people who'd go on and they would read their little stories and they would follow creators, but there was no actual financial incentive because you weren't paying the creators. The incentive was building a follower base. You had a lot of people at 14 who tended to be the audience for Wattpad, especially 14-year-old girls who were dealing with a lot of self-negativity in their real life, because they're teenagers coming of age in the time of Tumblr and Instagram and there's a lot of self-negativity on those platforms for young teenage girls.This was an opportunity where they could share their very specific, niche interests. They could write fan fiction about One Direction, or they could write fan fiction about their favorite anime, and they can write their short stories and have a really solid community of people — like LiveJournal for us — come out and say, “This is really great. You're talented, we'd love to continue reading.” And you could see your success and that attention you're receiving grow literally in the number of followers you had. It became this wholesome space away from the internet in a different way.I can't remember exactly the year they did this, but then Wattpad starts introducing financial incentives. There's this idea that you can charge for chapters as you're releasing them and people can subscribe to you for early access. As Wattpad continues to develop and they realize there's this really strong audience of content creators who are creating pretty well-thought-out content that would make for really good movies and TV series, Wattpad then launches its film division and says, we want to work with creators on this platform and bring their work to Sony Pictures, to Netflix, to Disney. We want to get them books.So you have movies like To All the Boys I Loved Before and that genre, which did not start on Wattpad, or you had After, which did start on Wattpad, and you had all these movies coming out that were gaining a larger audience. These authors then create a cycle of further posting, right? Because now people are saying, I can do that. I have access to Wattpad. I think I'm a good writer. And you see, which we've seen over and over again, how it goes from 1,000 subscribers to 10,000 to 10 million to 100 million users who are all posting in an effort to get attention.What's really interesting is how we define the value of that attention, because it used to be that the value of attention on the platform when people first started was from other 14- or 15-year-olds. It was a very peer-to-peer situation. It was, you are writing for someone like me.Now that value is defined by a Netflix executive in their 50s who says, I really think there are 14-year-old girls who would like this type of movie. That's really popular on the site, so we're going to work with Wattpad. The value has now become entirely backed by a financial reward. And if it's not backed by a financial reward, it's still within the follower count. What you get now is this company who — again, I bought shares in it — I think has a really strong business operation, because you have an endless supply of content coming in. You only need to pick a handful of titles that you think will appeal to these larger companies, and then you work with the author on getting them into this three-picture deal with Netflix.All of a sudden you're in between a very traditional world of moviemaking and television series, and you have this constant supply of free ideas and free content coming in that you technically can own the rights to if you work with a creator. No 17-year-old writer at this point is going to say no to having a movie on Netflix. So you get into a really interesting constant flow of supply with very high levels of demand that you can then cherry-pick.The other version of this — which is another company I have shares in, and this is not financial advice, for transparency — is Reddit. Once Google aligned and said, hey, people want more familiar answers when they're searching for “do I have cancer,” Google said, we can just pull from Reddit. It's going to help us with our AI and we can just serve that instead of having to pay The New York Times to have this.All of a sudden you're in this world where Reddit becomes the future of the internet because Google is the still the main pathway to the internet. And if you're pulling from Reddit, what does that do to authority? What does that do to the incentive structure to be popular on Reddit? Which for a while was just, did you show authority and knowledge within your own subreddit community? Now it takes on a whole new world.The business applications of controlling the supply of attention, putting it through a very narrow passage by cherry-picking demand, and how you can sell that demand, is kind of where we're at right now with a lot of these user-generated-content platforms.I love that. They found a way to sell, or at least monetize, like in Reddit's case, respect and reputation in the form of karma. And with Webtoon, I was shocked to see that they're like a $2.8 billion company now. There have always been web comics on the internet, but they were the first to really roll them up into Webtoon. There has always been fan fiction on the internet, but they were among the first to roll them up into this package.AO3, Fanfiction.net, they're not trying to develop a flywheel to give you more attention. They're excellent communities and they retain a lot of that original character. But the thing that Webtoon was really interested in is that they realized the currency of their realm is attention and followers, and now they are a multibillion-dollar company.That, I think, was one of the more compelling stories from this summer. When I saw that you were coming out with Posting Nexus, I was like, oh man, there could not have been a better moment for this. There could not be a better moment to really think about how attention works online.Yeah. And I know you'll appreciate the underlying part of this, because I know you are, and I mean this with all the love, a giant nerd.Gigantic.But one of the best stories I wrote when I was at The Verge — not in terms of it being a good story, but in terms of me liking it — was when I talked to the Wattpad team, the Webtoon team, and said, how do you incorporate data? You have huge numbers of chapters being uploaded every single day from all these authors that come on.They developed a tool, which will sound very familiar to anyone who's ever worked in SEO, where they look at every single word and they look at very specific trend words and try to figure out if it's reaching an audience cluster or cohort that is in demand from other studios. For example: Latino werewolf. Is there an audience for Latino werewolf romances? They can track it, and they do track it. Then they play around with the recommendation algorithms and some of the product placement, and as that grows, they then say, okay, we want to hyperfocus on this in order to sell.That, to me, is the other underlying part of the attention story. There was a really great article by John Herrman, who works at New York Mag, and he talked about whether Twitter is back or not back. He ends his article by saying it doesn't really matter, because according to Twitter's CEO, it is back. According to Elon, it's thriving. It was this idea that Twitter inherently feels very small because communities have gotten smaller. What you think is important is what's appearing on your feed, right? This is how something could be super viral on TikTok for you and no one else has ever heard of it.That idea started with companies like Wattpad and Reddit. They started with this idea that has a really strong impact on this audience and the equation they do. And I worked with companies — not Wattpad, not Reddit — as a consultant on this exact equation, which was: How monetizable is this small audience compared to that small audience? If you're going to look at your cost, where are you going to get the strongest return on your investment?We do that now across a million different cohorts every single day. It's just, where do we think the attention that we're receiving, because they are getting attention from the small group, actually transfers into an action that we can better monetize versus what's the attention that we're seeing that is not going to transfer into a monetizable action. You do that equation, and what that ends up doing is restructuring culture.Imagine Twilight today. Someone would've been like, queer vampire? We think that audience translates into highly monetizable. Now you have Simon and Schuster, Netflix, YouTube — you have all these companies saying, okay, there's a trend here. So we're going to see a new volume of content support that trend. Then a year later, all of a sudden, The New York Times writes a story about how everyone's into queer vampires.It's like, well, that started because someone looked at a cohort of strong attention and said, that's monetizable. It just blew up into redefining what culture is. That's pure attention online that transfers offline.That idea of “this niche is monetizable; this one's not” feels like that's been every success story on the internet for the past decade.When you were describing that, I was reminded of my favorite genre collision, which created something that could not have existed before the internet: the success of D&D podcasts and D&D content, whether it's Critical Role, or you see all this stuff on Dropout doing phenomenally well right now. That only happened because there was a group of niche fans that really, really clicked with something. They realized that this stuff is easier to produce than scripted content sometimes, and you could just see the value proposition make sense to people in real time. Now they're selling out Madison Square Garden.Seeing this very market-based thing, as you were describing, was like, oh man. We've seen this happen. That's really cool.I'm so happy you said this, because it's kind of the end point of what Posting Nexus wants to get at. The fact that things happen in one area and then move somewhere else happens all the time. You watch your favorite football team and then you go watch them play at the stadium. You discover your favorite singer via an album and then you go watch them play a concert. That's super traditional.What we're seeing now is a continuation of that, but it's fascinating to me. I think about this with Critical Role; I think about this with the Pod Save America guys. Effectively what they're doing is taking this attention that you've given them and monetizing it in a new way that feels weird to us because it's different from a superstar musician or a team sport that has always existed in the offline. This is a group of talent, a group of people that we associate solely with being online. And we have that really strong parasocial relationship with creators, because we literally watch them in our bed, even more so than TV. They're in our bed and we listen to them on their podcasts, because they can't just have a YouTube, right? Now they're podcasting, and they're finding different ways to capture more attention.It says a lot about how much we cling to human connectivity. This is my general barbell thesis, is that the world going forward, online or offline, is implausibly big — implausibly big like Christianity, or Taylor Swift — and addressably small. Which is still good; it just means monetizable, like Pod Save America or Critical Role.The whole goal of the first one is that you don't actually have to do 90,000 different things. People will come to you because that's what they crave. They crave that connection. And the second one, the more opportunity you give people to come and see you physically and have that connectivity, have that connection, the more you're going to be able to split how you want your attention eight different ways. Now that they've seen you, maybe they'll buy the book you're selling as opposed to if you just had the podcast.When we give attention and when people demand our attention in different forums, how does that then create these trends within business, within culture, the way we look at religion, the way we look at physical spaces? How does that impact our life offline? So again, it's that general thesis of why people do anything they do online, and how does that translate to what happens offline? That's the obsessive point for me.You've been so generous with your time, I want to make sure we bring this one home. You and I have both worked for the biggest entertainment company on the planet, you and I have both had independent newsletters that were profitable, and it is comforting to realize that it's not simply everything gets eaten or nothing survives. There is a vibrant version of the internet that has all of this.My favorite topic, which I annoy everyone in my life with, is history. I realize that makes me the most boring person on the internet, or just the most average person on the internet, but the thing I really like about history — whether that's ancient, modern, whatever it is — is that nothing is new. Everything happens again and again, so the internet and the fight for attention is like forms of religion battling it out during the Crusades. I mean, it was far more violent, and I'm glad we're not in those times, but it's this idea of what you're choosing to give attention and therefore power to, how we then take that power and tie it to our identity, and our way of communicating and the incentive that we have at the basis of all this is the same.What the internet has done is create unprecedented scale and rapidity that we can't even comprehend. We don't even have time to sit and think, oh, that's crazy that that thing happened. The publishing industry was wiped out, but we don't even have to do that because there's this new thing that's happening and it's newsletters. Which by the way are just pamphlets, which by the way are what people used to print the 1600s, right?It's not new, and yet for us because of the abundance of information that we have coming in, the abundance of content, of entertainment, of distraction that is demanding our attention, we don't have time to sit back and think, what was then five minutes ago and what will be five minutes from now? As we look at some of the biggest power players that build out a lot of these demands — whether it's user-generated social media, whether it's entertainment, whatever it is — bring it back down and really sit and think: What have I given my attention to today and why did I do that? What did it bring to me? And actually, what if I didn't want to do this?You kind of see this with Gen Z, by the way, who are like, I want a phone that's not connected to the internet. Them realizing this is not actually good for me, but what do I need in order to stay connected and feel that really strong presence of humanity?Big question. To your point, it's a super heady topic. What I try to do with the blog is bring it down into a topic that makes sense, that we can actually, tangibly grasp, while asking that question, which is why do you do anything and how has it affected you offline today?In your intro post you had a line saying it's a humongous topic, and there are a million tendrils to pull on. I am very excited to read those million tendrils. It is called Posting Nexus. I'll be sure to link it out.Julia, where can folks find you? Where can they follow you? Where can they see what you're up to?Wow, this is the first time I'm not in a publication. This is crazy. I'm still on X and Threads at @loudmouthjulia, and Posting Nexus is being hosted on Ghost. I'm trying that one out.Hey, a million flowers blooming. It's a fun time.This sounds like such a fun project, and I'm very eager to keep following where you're going. Thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.Thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure talking to you.Edited by Susie Stark.If you have anything you'd like to see in this Sunday special, shoot me an email. Comment below! Thanks for reading, and thanks so much for supporting Numlock.Thank you so much for becoming a paid subscriber! Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.numlock.com/subscribe

Mo Welch spent years trying to make jokes about the father who abused her mother and abandoned her family funny without totally bumming out her audience. Now, she has perfected the art of the extremely dark “dad joke” in her new stand-up special-slash-documentary ‘Dad Jokes.' In this episode, Welch talks about how terrifying it was to come face-to-face with her father for the first time in 20 years after he went to prison for stealing TVs and how she managed to thread the needle of turning that trauma into comedy on stage. She also reveals what she has learned about comedy from collaborators (and previous Last Laugh guests) Anthony Jeselnik and Beth Stelling and tells the story of how she dropped her microphone in a toilet seconds before her late-night stand-up debut on ‘Conan.'But first, Allegra Frank joins Matt for her final appearance on the podcast to wrap up their discussion about the big comedy categories at this year's Emmy Awards, including what to expect from ‘The Bear,' ‘Hacks,' ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm' and more. Stream Mo Welch's ‘Dad Jokes' on YouTubeFollow Mo Welch on Instagram @momowelchFollow Matt Wilstein on Threads @mattwilsteinFollow Allegra Frank on Twitter @LegsFrankFollow The Last Laugh on Instagram @lastlaughpod and Threads @lastlaughpodHighlights from this episode and others at The Daily Beast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Allegra Frank (The Daily Beast) joins us for a rom com parody that was dead on arrival with 2014's THEY CAME TOGETHER. Together we discuss the careers of the two leads, the movies cruel tones, comparisons to lonely island and Wet Hot American Summer influence   --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/exitingthroughthe2010s/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/exitingthroughthe2010s/support

!!! CONTENT WARNING: DISCUSSION OF IMPLIED CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE, AND DRUG USE FROM 48:41 TO 57:06 !!!This week the hosts talk about Gone Home from Fullbright Studios! A game about family, interiority, and that kid you were only friends with because they had a Nintendo.Buy the game everywhere!---Discussed in the episodeJef Rouner's 2016 article from the Houston Press (title omitted because of spoilers)Gone Home and Its Hidden Objects by Elizabeth Goins for Game DeveloperWhy Gone Home is the Most Important Game of the Decade by Nicole Carpenter for PolygonAdditional stuffAs Gone Home turns five, we look back on its polarizing legacy by Allegra Frank for Polygon---Visit our website!Support the show on Kofi!Follow the show on Bluesky!Check out The Worst Garbage Online!---Art by Tara CrawfordMusic by _amaranthineAdditional sounds by BoqehProduced and edited by AJ Fillari---Timecodes:(00:00) - Woops! A gamergame happened again... (01:51) - It's a game about hugging (02:16) - Welzcomet 2o aozcdip (03:51) - What is Gone Home? | General Discussion (21:00) - The horror of Gone Home | General Discussion (29:24) - Spoiler Discussion (30:00) - Mom | Spoiler Discussion (39:03) - Dad | Spoiler Discussion (50:32) - CW: IMPLIED SEXUAL ABUSE OF A MINOR, DRUG USE, HALLUCINATIONS (58:57) - Sam | Spoiler Discussion (01:19:39) - Katie | Spoiler Discussion (01:25:26) - We love video games and they are art!!!! (01:27:19) - Big Takeaways (01:27:37) - Kim's Big Takeaway (01:29:30) - AJ's Big Takeaway (01:31:26) - Chase's Big Takeaway (01:35:23) - When did these experiences start? (01:42:06) - Wrapping up

Get ready for a Close Encounter of the Second Kind! The epic conclusion to our episode all about the film career of Steven Speilberg with Allegra Frank of The Daily Beast! If you have any questions/comments/suggestions for the show, follow us on twitter @TheMixedReviews, like us on Facebook, e-mail us at reviewsmixed@gmail.com, visit our  Instagram or  TikTok for extra content, become a patron on  our Patreon, or stop by  our shop and pick up some podcast merchandise! Don't forget to subscribe to us on  iTunes,  Stitcher Radio,  Spotify,  Podchaser,  Audible, or  Google.

An episode of Jurassic proportions! This month on the show we're joined by Allegra Frank of The Daily Beast to deep dive into the film career of one of the world's most popular filmmakers, Steven Spielberg! From Jaws to E.T., Indiana Jones to The Fabelmans, we cover it all! An episode so epic we had to split it in two! If you have any questions/comments/suggestions for the show, follow us on twitter @TheMixedReviews, like us on Facebook, e-mail us at reviewsmixed@gmail.com, visit our  Instagram or  TikTok for extra content, become a patron on  our Patreon, or stop by  our shop and pick up some podcast merchandise! Don't forget to subscribe to us on  iTunes,  Stitcher Radio,  Spotify,  Podchaser,  Audible, or  Google.

The massive, sprawling Netflix Is a Joke Festival kicks off in Los Angeles today and host Matt Wilstein is joined by The Daily Beast's Allegra Frank and Sean L. McCarthy to preview what comedy fans can expect—including a starry roast of Tom Brady, a live Katt Williams stand-up special, a John Mulaney-hosted late-night show and a lot more. They also delve into how Netflix came to dominate the streaming comedy world—for better and, occasionally, for worse. Come to a live taping of The Last Laugh podcast with special guest Mae Martin at Netflix Is a Joke Fest on May 8.Follow Matt Wilstein on Threads @mattwilsteinFollow Allegra Frank on Twitter @LegsFrankFollow Sean L. McCarthy on Instagram @thecomicscomicFollow The Last Laugh on Instagram @lastlaughpod and Threads @lastlaughpodHighlights from this episode and others at The Daily Beast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's been six years since W. Kamau Bell's last special ‘Private School Negro' premiered on Netflix. And after hosting CNN's ‘United Shades of America' for seven seasons and directing two hit documentaries, he's not totally sure that he should still be considered a stand-up comedian. In his third appearance on the podcast—taped in-studio in his native Oakland—Bell speaks frankly about his ambivalence around pursuing the life of a comic right now and why he keeps finding himself on stage, especially as the 2024 election heats up. Bell discusses comedy's role in the Biden vs. Trump rematch, why comedians like Joe Rogan have embraced third-party spoiler RFK Jr., the fallout from his ‘We Need to Talk About Cosby' docuseries and a lot more. But first, The Daily Beast's Allegra Frank joins host Matt Wilstein to answer some burning questions about the first episode of ‘Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show.' How real is it? Is the identity of the anonymous masked man supposed to be so obvious? And why do we find this deeply sad show so funny? Follow W. Kamau Bell on Twitter @wkamaubell and Instagram @wkamaubellFollow Matt Wilstein on Threads @mattwilsteinFollow The Last Laugh on Instagram @lastlaughpod and Threads @lastlaughpodHighlights from this episode and others at The Daily Beast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Allegra Frank, renowned journalist, critic, and oreo connoisseur, joins Jenna to craft an adorable, hard-hitting game with the prompts: squishy werewolves visual novel Eschewing the normal player-romance offerings of visual novels, they craft a game where you matchmake NPCs and solve a dark mystery of your own past, come back to haunt you. Also there are some non-branded Squishmallow integrations that give the game a bit of a texture. A squish texture. Turns out, love was the greatest mystery of all. Check out Allegra Frank on Twitter @legsfrank and read her work on The Daily Beast. Find Space Dunk Oreos in your local grocer. Thank you for listening to Big Game Hunger! Email us at BigGameHungerPod@gmail.com. Support this show, and submit your OWN random prompts, by subscribing at Patreon.com/TheJenna Big Game Hunger is part of the Multitude Collective of podcasts. Edited and mixed by the talented Mischa Stanton, and created and hosted by Jenna Stoeber.

The Daily Beast's Allegra Frank joins us for a wide-ranging discussion about Weezer! Allegra is a longtime superfan of all Weezer, Alan and Andrea are longtime superfans of early Weezer so it was a good chance to explore the bits of Weezer that we maybe haven't given a fair shake over the years. It really was a joy to get a chance to have a big long talk about Weezer. Allegra is @LegsFrank. You can find her work at The Daily Beast. Alan is @alan_maguire. Juvenalia is his main thing right now. Andrea  @AndreaCleary_. Her other podcasts are My Favourite Album With Andrea Cleary and The Nialler9 Podcast. Her newsletter is at https://andrea-cleary.ghost.io/ Thank you to Dee McDonnell for our artwork. We have a Patreon! You can get bonus episodes including our fortnightly show Started/Finished where we talk about the pop culture we started and finished in the previous two weeks. We also have some free lil bits of  merch. It's patreon.com/juvenalia This episode was produced by Alan. Juvenalia is a Tall Tales podcast. Thank you Cassie.

What does it mean to be a rebel in a digital age? PEN Award-winning author Mitch Horowitz provides us with three strategies to move forward. Recorded live at Digital Void's Meme in the Moment Festival in New York City on Wednesday, October 26, 2022.

Allegra gets back in front of the mic and DOESN'T embarrass herself on this episode of Stoop Kidz! Phoebe, however, DOES embarrass herself when her nervous flatulence gets picked up on mic in front of a large audience. (Podcast editor's note: That's one heck of a microphone.) Can Arnold help Grandpa get back his precious Packard after it's pilfered by some punk playing at payback? Can the automobile's many quirks help the duo prove it was stolen? How many Dashiell Hammett references can they stuff in an episode of Hey Arnold!? These questions and more in “Grandpa's Packard”! Find Allegra at the following links: - https://twitter.com/LegsFrank - https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/allegra-frank - https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed Listen to Allegra's other Stoop Kidz! appearances: - 65A The Beeper Queen/65B Oskar Can't Read? If you like Stoop Kidz!, tell a friend about our show and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Tell them they can also find us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/stoopkidzpod and on Instagram at www.instagram.com/stoopkidzpod/. We get a lot of really nice messages from our great listeners, and we'd love to see yours among them, so get in touch! All Stoop Kidz show art is created by our own Emily Csuy (https://www.instagram.com/emilycsuy/). Intro music: “Hey Arnold! Theme” by Jim Lang. Intermission music: “Invisible Hippo” by Jim Lang. Outro music: “Groove Remote” by Jim Lang.

On today's episode, Rachelle Hampton is joined by Slate's Nadira Goffe to discuss Rihanna and Paramore. First, they talk about the Super Bowl halftime show and the discourse that Rihanna sparked, and what she does or doesn't owe her fans. Then, they look at the new album from Paramore, This Is Why, discusses how the band respects and embraces Black culture, and why Black people feel so connected to the pop punk genre. And don't miss Rachelle and Nadira's roundtable discussion with Allegra Frank about Paramore's latest album. This podcast is produced by Daniel Schroeder, Rachelle Hampton, and Daisy Rosario. Subscribe to Slate Plus at http://slate.com/icymiplus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, Rachelle Hampton is joined by Slate's Nadira Goffe to discuss Rihanna and Paramore. First, they talk about the Super Bowl halftime show and the discourse that Rihanna sparked, and what she does or doesn't owe her fans. Then, they look at the new album from Paramore, This Is Why, discusses how the band respects and embraces Black culture, and why Black people feel so connected to the pop punk genre. And don't miss Rachelle and Nadira's roundtable discussion with Allegra Frank about Paramore's latest album. This podcast is produced by Daniel Schroeder, Rachelle Hampton, and Daisy Rosario. Subscribe to Slate Plus at http://slate.com/icymiplus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, Rachelle Hampton is joined by Slate's Nadira Goffe to discuss Rihanna and Paramore. First, they talk about the Super Bowl halftime show and the discourse that Rihanna sparked, and what she does or doesn't owe her fans. Then, they look at the new album from Paramore, This Is Why, discusses how the band respects and embraces Black culture, and why Black people feel so connected to the pop punk genre. And don't miss Rachelle and Nadira's roundtable discussion with Allegra Frank about Paramore's latest album. This podcast is produced by Daniel Schroeder, Rachelle Hampton, and Daisy Rosario. Subscribe to Slate Plus at http://slate.com/icymiplus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On today's episode, Rachelle Hampton is joined by Slate's Nadira Goffe to discuss Rihanna and Paramore. First, they talk about the Super Bowl halftime show and the discourse that Rihanna sparked, and what she does or doesn't owe her fans. Then, they look at the new album from Paramore, This Is Why, discusses how the band respects and embraces Black culture, and why Black people feel so connected to the pop punk genre. And don't miss Rachelle and Nadira's roundtable discussion with Allegra Frank about Paramore's latest album. This podcast is produced by Daniel Schroeder, Rachelle Hampton, and Daisy Rosario. Subscribe to Slate Plus at http://slate.com/icymiplus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In our final episode of the year host Matt Wilstein is joined by The Daily Beast's Laura Bradley and Allegra Frank to share their lists of the funniest performances of 2022 across stand-up, TV, movies and more. If you're looking for ideas about what to watch over the holidays, this episode is for you!See our full lists of the funniest performances of 2022 at The Daily Beast.Follow Allegra Frank on Twitter @LegsFrankFollow Laura Bradley on Twitter @lpbradley Follow Matt Wilstein on Twitter @mattwilsteinFollow The Last Laugh on Instagram @lastlaughpod Highlights from this episode and others at The Daily Beast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

To round out the year, we invited three friends to gather and discuss the games that made them feel most deeply. (plus, I share my top ten games of the year) Featuring special guests: Allegra Frank, frequent guest on one of my fav podcasts, ICYMI, editor at The Daily Beast, formerly at Vox, Polygon and Slate. Sarah Elmaleh, co-host on Eggplant, a podcast about videogames (not sex!),voice of high-profile video game villains (spheres, not cubes!), voice actor, director and advocate.  M Joshua Cauller, trailer-maker for Devolver and creator/maintainer of the highly personal game discussion community, Reading Gamebow. 

Class is in session and Slate editor Allegra Frank is taking her seat! In “The Beeper Queen,” we get to see Helga's relationship with her mom in a new light when Miriam takes over for Big Bob at the beeper store before the business gets the better of them both. Then in “Oskar Can't Read?”, reading isn't the only thing Mr. Kokoshka learns – he also learns some self-reliance! We also share our stories of finding our way in places where we can't read the language. Find Allegra at the following links: - https://twitter.com/LegsFrank - https://www.thedailybeast.com/author/allegra-frank - https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed In the meantime, tell a friend about our show and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts! Tell them they can also find us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/stoopkidzpod and on Instagram at www.instagram.com/stoopkidzpod/. We get a lot of really nice messages from our great listeners, and we'd love to see yours among them, so get in touch! All Stoop Kidz show art is created by our own Emily Csuy (https://www.instagram.com/emilycsuy/). Intro music: “Hey Arnold! Theme” by Jim Lang. Intermission music: “The A Game” by Jim Lang. Outro music: “Beepers are a Girl's Best Friend” from 65A The Beeper Queen.

On this week's episode of The Waves, the streaming wars have come for us all. The Daily Beast's Allegra Frank sits down with Inkoo Kang of The Washington Post to talk about what happened at HBO and where gender fits into it all. HBO Max recently canceled the nearly done Batgirl, and has been quietly removing content from its streaming service as it prepares to merge with Discovery+. Allegra and Inkoo talk about how streaming services reducing their content offering likely spells trouble for non-white, non-male voices.  In Slate Plus, is Batman feminist?  Recommendations: Allegra: Never Have I Ever on Netflix Inkoo: The Harley Quinn series on HBO Max   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Alicia Montgomery and Daisy Rosario. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, the streaming wars have come for us all. The Daily Beast's Allegra Frank sits down with Inkoo Kang of The Washington Post to talk about what happened at HBO and where gender fits into it all. HBO Max recently canceled the nearly done Batgirl, and has been quietly removing content from its streaming service as it prepares to merge with Discovery+. Allegra and Inkoo talk about how streaming services reducing their content offering likely spells trouble for non-white, non-male voices.  In Slate Plus, is Batman feminist?  Recommendations: Allegra: Never Have I Ever on Netflix Inkoo: The Harley Quinn series on HBO Max   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Alicia Montgomery and Daisy Rosario. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, the streaming wars have come for us all. The Daily Beast's Allegra Frank sits down with Inkoo Kang of The Washington Post to talk about what happened at HBO and where gender fits into it all. HBO Max recently canceled the nearly done Batgirl, and has been quietly removing content from its streaming service as it prepares to merge with Discovery+. Allegra and Inkoo talk about how streaming services reducing their content offering likely spells trouble for non-white, non-male voices.  In Slate Plus, is Batman feminist?  Recommendations: Allegra: Never Have I Ever on Netflix Inkoo: The Harley Quinn series on HBO Max   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Alicia Montgomery and Daisy Rosario. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, the streaming wars have come for us all. The Daily Beast's Allegra Frank sits down with Inkoo Kang of The Washington Post to talk about what happened at HBO and where gender fits into it all. HBO Max recently canceled the nearly done Batgirl, and has been quietly removing content from its streaming service as it prepares to merge with Discovery+. Allegra and Inkoo talk about how streaming services reducing their content offering likely spells trouble for non-white, non-male voices.  In Slate Plus, is Batman feminist?  Recommendations: Allegra: Never Have I Ever on Netflix Inkoo: The Harley Quinn series on HBO Max   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Alicia Montgomery and Daisy Rosario. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, the streaming wars have come for us all. The Daily Beast's Allegra Frank sits down with Inkoo Kang of The Washington Post to talk about what happened at HBO and where gender fits into it all. HBO Max recently canceled the nearly done Batgirl, and has been quietly removing content from its streaming service as it prepares to merge with Discovery+. Allegra and Inkoo talk about how streaming services reducing their content offering likely spells trouble for non-white, non-male voices.  In Slate Plus, is Batman feminist?  Recommendations: Allegra: Never Have I Ever on Netflix Inkoo: The Harley Quinn series on HBO Max   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Alicia Montgomery and Daisy Rosario. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, the streaming wars have come for us all. The Daily Beast's Allegra Frank sits down with Inkoo Kang of The Washington Post to talk about what happened at HBO and where gender fits into it all. HBO Max recently canceled the nearly done Batgirl, and has been quietly removing content from its streaming service as it prepares to merge with Discovery+. Allegra and Inkoo talk about how streaming services reducing their content offering likely spells trouble for non-white, non-male voices.  In Slate Plus, is Batman feminist?  Recommendations: Allegra: Never Have I Ever on Netflix Inkoo: The Harley Quinn series on HBO Max   Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Shannon Palus, Alicia Montgomery and Daisy Rosario. Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Andru explores three instances of media's relationship with Richard Nixon: the big screen, live performance, and Nixon's own audio recordings. Special thanks to Allegra Frank, Rich Little, and Luke Nichter.

This week in the Hellmouth, Leslie and Kayte are joined by very special guest Allegra Frank (@LegsFrank) of the Daily Beast! We talk about mean mommy vamp Willow (well, mostly Kayte does), wonder what in the world Cordelia saw in Xander, and the Master's Human Juice Box Factory.Follow Fangs on Twitter!Join our Patreon for special episodes!

Deputy editor of The Daily Beast Allegra Frank joins the panel to cover Kirby adults, Pokemon Gonlyfans, and whether or not demons are cool.

Deputy editor of The Daily Beast Allegra Frank joins the panel to cover Kirby adults, Pokemon Gonlyfans, and whether or not demons are cool. Questions this week: Does adapting a story focused on choice into another medium cheapen player agency? (04:58) Where does the Kirby franchise go from here? (13:19) What's happened with Pokemon Go in the last six years since anyone played it? (20:13) Which video game character would you pick to guest host Saturday Night Live? (26:58) Are demons cool? (32:02) Kyle asks: Which famous writer would be best at writing a video game walkthrough? (41:36) Tim asks: who cares? (48:42) LIGHTNING ROUND: GameFAQ&As: Dragon Age Inquisition (49:35) Recommendation & Outro (01:00:44) Pokemon Go to the forums to discuss this episode! A SMALL SELECTION OF THINGS REFERENCED: Demonschool by Necrosoft Games, now wishlistable on Steam Dornie Super Mario 64 Jurassic Park: Rampage Edition Castlevania: Symphony of the Night Yoshi Black Mirror: Bandersnatch F For Fake (1973) The Walking Dead BioShock Dragon Age series Mass Effect series Life Is Strange series Halo Kirby games Kirby Air Ride Kirby and the Forgotten Land Curb Your Enthusiasm Pokémon universe Pokémon GO Mongo only pawn in game of life Cork The Human Toll Of Fallout 76's Disastrous Launch Marcus Michael Fenix George Steinbrenner Big Boss Solid Snake Dr. Hal “Otacon” Emmerich Demonschool Shin Megami Tensei series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge Persona series Yakuza / Ryū ga Gotoku series Final Fight: “Streetwise” Ernest Hemingway Homer Beowulf Salman Rushdie Jonathan Franzen Conker's Bad Fur Day Sylvia Plath Warlock Jean-Paul Sartre Jorge Luis Borges Miguel de Cervantes Recommendations: Brandon: F For Fake (1973), Desiccation's Cold Dead Earth, Tim: This lunchtime photograph, Don't call yourself a flexitarian Allegra: Freeze then thaw your tofu Support on Patreon Subscribe: RSS, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and more! Hosted by Alex Jaffe, with Tim Rogers, Brandon Sheffield, and Allegra Frank. Edited by Esper Quinn. Original Music by Kurt Feldman.

Allegra Frank really misses her sister. Allegra is a former editor for Polygon, a writer, a podcaster, and senior editor at Slate, where she covers music, culture, and the internet. She also has a lot of fun over at Aw, Would You Look at the Time. Here's some stuff we talked about: Our Feelings Unwinnable and Kill Screen, which Allegra read more than Polygon back in the day, no offense. Kirby and the Forgotten Land reminds Allegra of time with her sister Breathe of the Wild: a SIZZLING hot take Elden Ring doesn't give a shit about you Spelltower never gets old Peggle 2 is like, "You're doing great, honey" Animal Crossing has a quicker payoff than Stardew Valley That one couple on Love is Blind needs to figure out their whole Rock Band situation Elite Beat Agents will give you a boost if you need it

The Oscars used to be one of the biggest things on TV. Now they're… not. Does that matter to the movie business and to movie-goers? We discuss with our annual Oscar experts: Vox's Alissa Wilkinson and Slate's Allegra Frank, who talk about their favorite movies, and try to sell Recode's Peter Kafka on watching a 3-hour foreign language film. But more important: How and why should the Oscars try to remake itself for a TikTok world — and will a Twitter poll + DJ Kahled and Tony Hawk do the trick? Featuring: Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie), Film & Culture Editor at Vox Allegra Frank (@LegsFrank), Senior Editor at Slate Host: Peter Kafka (@pkafka), Senior Editor at Recode More to explore: Subscribe for free to Recode Media, Peter Kafka, one of the media industry's most acclaimed reporters, talks to business titans, journalists, comedians, and more to get their take on today's media landscape. About Recode by Vox: Recode by Vox helps you understand how tech is changing the world — and changing us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Baggy trousers, hanging shirts, tentacles and Furry flirts! Ben and Tao reminisce about school days gone by after trying to get laid in supernatural dating sim, Monster Prom. The innuendo filled discussion bounces from hentai to bestiality, UK vs UK cultural touchstones to what constitutes critical acclaim, and a voiceless new contributor joins in from the wings: Tao’s mysteriously anonymous vampire girlfriend (or so he says). Both hosts profess to(o) much ignorance of online pornographic kinks, Ben finds dating every bit as tough as he remembers, and Tao surprises no-one revealing a Furry fetish. Sort of. No story spoilers. Content Warning: PEGI 13. An explicit, hypersexual discussion including many taboos and tone-deaf singing. Keep your pets locked up! Clarifications:The original soundtrack to Monster Prom was composed by Claudi MartinezWeebl’s Stuff was a 2002 era flash website. It still exists as a shadow of its former self.Here’s Polygon writers Jeff Ramos and Allegra Frank offering the flipside of our discussion: https://www.polygon.com/2018/5/2/17304752/monster-promAudio extracts:Baggy Trousers by MadnessByker Grove theme tuneThe Inbetweeners theme (instrumental)Press Gang themeNelson from The SimpsonsDr Hakim from It Takes TwoChristopher Walken SNL ‘gotta have more cowbell’Just the two of us by Bill WithersMass Effect (Tali)Monsters UniversityMonsters IncHolding Out For A Hero by Bonnie TylerMona The Vampire opening titlesMonster Prom’s kickstarterFriday Night LightsBadger Badger - Weebl’s StuffAlexandre Desplat’s theme to The Shape of WaterYamete memeJurassic Park (1993)Arrested Development Mr FAn American Werewolf in London by Elmer BernsteinThe Animals of Farthing Wood theme (1993-1995)Paradise Killer OST - The Lemegeton BopBack to the FutureSuperbad - Michael Cera sings ‘These Eyes’Blind Date with Cilla BlackAge of Empires 2 themePatreon: https://www.patreon.com/pixelvisionpodTwitter: @pixelvizEmail: pixelvisionpodcast@gmail.com Get full access to Pixel Vision at www.pixelvision.net/subscribe

This week, senior editor at Slate, Allegra Frank, fills in for Steve as the panel begins by debating the enjoyability of Apple TV+'s new star-studded thriller Severance. Then, the panel digs into Paul Thomas Anderson's latest Oscar contender Licorice Pizza. Finally, the panel discusses longform YouTube videos and the rise and fall of attention spans, inspired by Terry Nguyen's article “The video essay boom” for Vox. Referenced video essays include: Mike's Mic on Pretty Little Liars, Jenny Nicholson on Dear Evan Hansen, and Quinton Reviews on Victorious. In Slate Plus, the panel discusses thematic aversions they have in films. Email us at culturefest@slate.com. Endorsements Julia: Endorsing Six Seasons: a New Way With Vegetables by Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg, which has lots of delicious recipes that are designed for your farmer's market finds. Allegra: The podcast Dead Eyes from comedian Connor Ratliff about people in the entertainment industry and their long forgotten, lost, and/or canceled projects—inspired by how he was fired from Band of Brothers by Tom Hanks himself because he had “dead eyes.” Dana: Speaking of video essays, filmmaker Kogonada's (After Yang, Columbus) video essays which are extremely visual and beautifully edited. They're all on his website, but Dana specifically shouted out: Breaking Bad // POV, Mirrors of Bergman, Hands of Bresson, and Linklater // On Cinema & Time. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Nadira Goffe. Outro music is "If Only I Was a Poet" by Staffan Carlen. Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts, a bonus segment in each episode of the Culture Gabfest, full access to Slate's journalism on Slate.com, and more. Sign up now at slate.com/cultureplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, senior editor at Slate, Allegra Frank, fills in for Steve as the panel begins by debating the enjoyability of Apple TV+'s new star-studded thriller Severance. Then, the panel digs into Paul Thomas Anderson's latest Oscar contender Licorice Pizza. Finally, the panel discusses longform YouTube videos and the rise and fall of attention spans, inspired by Terry Nguyen's article “The video essay boom” for Vox. Referenced video essays include: Mike's Mic on Pretty Little Liars, Jenny Nicholson on Dear Evan Hansen, and Quinton Reviews on Victorious. In Slate Plus, the panel discusses thematic aversions they have in films. Email us at culturefest@slate.com. Endorsements Julia: Endorsing Six Seasons: a New Way With Vegetables by Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg, which has lots of delicious recipes that are designed for your farmer's market finds. Allegra: The podcast Dead Eyes from comedian Connor Ratliff about people in the entertainment industry and their long forgotten, lost, and/or canceled projects—inspired by how he was fired from Band of Brothers by Tom Hanks himself because he had “dead eyes.” Dana: Speaking of video essays, filmmaker Kogonada's (After Yang, Columbus) video essays which are extremely visual and beautifully edited. They're all on his website, but Dana specifically shouted out: Breaking Bad // POV, Mirrors of Bergman, Hands of Bresson, and Linklater // On Cinema & Time. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Nadira Goffe. Outro music is "If Only I Was a Poet" by Staffan Carlen. Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts, a bonus segment in each episode of the Culture Gabfest, full access to Slate's journalism on Slate.com, and more. Sign up now at slate.com/cultureplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, senior editor at Slate, Allegra Frank, fills in for Steve as the panel begins by debating the enjoyability of Apple TV+'s new star-studded thriller Severance. Then, the panel digs into Paul Thomas Anderson's latest Oscar contender Licorice Pizza. Finally, the panel discusses longform YouTube videos and the rise and fall of attention spans, inspired by Terry Nguyen's article “The video essay boom” for Vox. Referenced video essays include: Mike's Mic on Pretty Little Liars, Jenny Nicholson on Dear Evan Hansen, and Quinton Reviews on Victorious. In Slate Plus, the panel discusses thematic aversions they have in films. Email us at culturefest@slate.com. Endorsements Julia: Endorsing Six Seasons: a New Way With Vegetables by Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg, which has lots of delicious recipes that are designed for your farmer's market finds. Allegra: The podcast Dead Eyes from comedian Connor Ratliff about people in the entertainment industry and their long forgotten, lost, and/or canceled projects—inspired by how he was fired from Band of Brothers by Tom Hanks himself because he had “dead eyes.” Dana: Speaking of video essays, filmmaker Kogonada's (After Yang, Columbus) video essays which are extremely visual and beautifully edited. They're all on his website, but Dana specifically shouted out: Breaking Bad // POV, Mirrors of Bergman, Hands of Bresson, and Linklater // On Cinema & Time. Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Nadira Goffe. Outro music is "If Only I Was a Poet" by Staffan Carlen. Slate Plus members get ad-free podcasts, a bonus segment in each episode of the Culture Gabfest, full access to Slate's journalism on Slate.com, and more. Sign up now at slate.com/cultureplus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Diet Coke & Lilith are joined by Allegra Frank @legsfrank to talk about that most cherished cookie, the Oreo! Intro voiceover by Jarett Raymond Music & Sounds used during the intro & Outro: Hall of the Mountain King by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Thunder by lennyboy (freesound.org) Door, Front, Opening, A - InspectorJ (freesound.org) Noise - Juandamb (fresound.org) Walking through Mud - Breviceps Strong wind inside house _ Viento fuerte interior casa - SonoRec (freesound.org) Tape Start - unfa (freesound.org) video_recorder_load_cassette_02 - Magedu (freesound.org) creaky door - m_marek (freesound.org) Door, Front, Closing, A - InspectorJ (freesound.org) Door closing, door closed - steinhyrningur (freesound.org) Door_Heavy_Reverb_Open_Close - LamaMakesMusic (freesound.org) video_recorder_eject_cassette - magedu (freesound.org)

Extra Extra! Hear all about it! All the news that's fit to podcast! Join us in the Nice Games Clubhouse/Newsroom to hear all about the latest and greatest news from the video game world- at least latest and greatest from our vantage point in the past. Mark takes Valve to task, Martha makes a case for golf being interesting and Stephen is only here for the mechanics not the entertainment.It's an episode full of releases, re-releases, spiritual successors, and "Epic" fails!Bulletin topic (Recent releases)GamesKingdom Hearts 3 (finally)Apex LegendsGod Eater 3WargrooveResident Evil 2Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy (a rerelease)New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe on SwitchBury Me My LoveWalking Dead Final Season Episode 3Pic-a-Pix PiecesCrackdown 3AnthemFar Cry New DawnMetro ExodusBulletin topic (News)Valve Says It's 'Unfair' That Metro Exodus Is Exclusive To Epic Store - Nathan Grason, KotakuAxiom Verge's free Epic Game Store version has a funny Steam bug - Allegra Frank, PolygonAnthem: 19 changes from the demo to the live game - Ryan Gilliam, PolygonActivision Blizzard Lays Off Hundreds Of Employees - Jason Schreier, KotakuThe Fallout Of Activision Blizzard's Massive Layoffs - Jason Schreier, KotakuNintendo Exec Says 'A Very High Number' Of Its Designers Are Women - Jason Schreier, KotakuAmazon's questionable MMO has you colonize the 'new world' - Colin Campbell, PolygonSuper Smash Bros. Melee Events in Four States Ban Wobbling After Tennessee Ruli… - Ian Walker, KotakuCaptain Marvel website

#15 "We are artists and we should be artists."Roundtable 2017.03.13 A day late but worth the wait! In this high signal-to-noise roundtable episode, each member of the club picks a topic that they are particularly passionate about:Stephen shares his wisdom and guidance about playtesting your work early and often, Martha helps you get your act together in a practical discussion about project management, and Mark tries to explain the obligation he feels as an artist, but picks a weird hill to die on as he wrongly insists that Portal 2 isn't really about anything.We're trying to make the show even better and we need your input! Be nice and visit our feedback form to tell us what you think!Ice Cold Games@zacharyjohnsonNIce Games Club Feedback Form Demoing and Playtesting 0:03:27 Stephen McGregorProduction Project Management 0:33:26 Martha MegarryProductionToolstrelloAgile Development - WikipediaWaterfall Development - WikipediaKanban Development - WikipediaThe Blue Yarn - 99% Invisible - The Blue Yarn, 99% InvisibleNUMMI (2015) - NUMMI, This American LifeDavid Megarry's Three Questions all project managers should ask: “Do you have all the resources you need?" "Do you have any roadblocks or impediments?" "Are you on schedule?”“A project manager (PM) is more of a problem solver than anything else. If you don't have the resources, the PM finds them. If there are roadblocks, the PM helps to find a way to get around them. If not on schedule, the PM alters it or adds more resources or changes scope. Above all, the PM communicates with management as to the state of the project so they can make proper decisions and not be blindsided or surprised.” -David Megarry Messages and Meanings 0:52:56 Mark LaCroixGame DesignSummerland - Michael Chabon, NovelA Closer Look at How Three Assassin's Creed Games Have Handled Slavery - Evan Narcisse, KotakuFor Honor's accidental alt-right connection - Allegra Frank, Polygon

This week on The History of Fun, Allegra Frank fills us all in on the origins of MANGA and its biggest franchise: Shonen Jump. Yes, if you've always been perplexed about the world of manga, this is the episode for you. And if you're already a fan of manga, there's a fair chance that we mispronounce at least one thing in this episode. Not Allegra, though. She's a pro. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Quite possibly the world's most famous cat (take that Garfield), Sanrio's Hello Kitty is a juggernaut. But where did this strange cat without a mouth come from? And could it be possible that she's NOT A CAT BUT RATHER A HUMAN GIRL? Yeah, things get weird, thanks to Allegra Frank and the rest of your friends at The History of Fun! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week we're exploring a very specific part of the Pokemon phenomenon: Pokemon Cards! Where did they come from? Are they still around? What do they have to do with Magic: The Gathering? Allegra Frank tells all! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's fair to say that no toy in the history of the world has caused more carnage than the trampoline. Seems like a perfect fit for Allegra Frank, who clearly hates them but decided, yet again, to pick something she hates. Join her and us as we soar to the highest of highs and then break our bones upon landing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The world has never seen a device quite like the N-Gage. Actually, that's not true. There was a second one. Why, oh, why, you ask? Allegra Frank is on the case! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, Allegra Frank explores the skyrocketing highs and the horrifying lows of the Beanie Baby phenomenon of the mid-90s. Where did they come from? Where did they go? Will they ever return in greater numbers? Yes, before there was BitCoin, there were Beanie Babies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ah, Monopoly, the game that lasts forever and makes you hate your friends. In their first episode, Russ Frushtick, Allegra Frank and Chris Plante explore the origins of the Parker Bros. game from hell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ever wonder who came up with the idea for Monopoly? Or where the Chuck E. Cheese robots come from? Or what caused the downfall of the Beanie Babies? Join Polygon's Russ Frushtick, Allegra Frank and Chris Plante on a weekly journey of discovery called The History of Fun. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices