What do scary people watch when they need to escape from this scary world? This week's media recommendations come from the experts of horror: Video Palace co-creator Mike Monello (also a creator of the Blair Witch Project) and Qiana Whitted, author of EC Comics: Race, Shock and Social Protest, which won the 2020 Eisner Award for best academic/scholarly work. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? account! You can also e...
Jan 19, 2021•6 min
This week's media recommendations come from Crystal Echo Hawk, founder and CEO of IllumiNative, a research-driven initiative created and led by Natives that is challenging negative narratives and supporting accurate and authentic portrayals of Native communities in pop culture. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? account! You can also email us at [email protected]. Music: “In Time” by Dylan Emmett ...
Jan 12, 2021•1 min
The How Do You Like It So Far team wishes you a happy 2021! With last year being one of collective pain, sorrow and loss, we need a new anthem for a new day that can inspire and comfort us. Take some recs from Varun Soni, USC's Dean of Religious Life. He has certainly helped plenty of Trojans through spiritual hardships, and hopefully the words of the seminal Bob Dylan can do the same to you. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like...
Jan 05, 2021•2 min
2020 is finally coming to a close, and with it, also comes the year's final media recommendations from the How Do You Like It So Far team! Today's recommendations come from Set Hernandez Rongkilyo, an undocumented immigrant filmmaker and community organizer. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far? account! You can also email us at [email protected]. Music: “In Time” by Dylan Emmett and “Spaceship” by L...
Dec 29, 2020•3 min
Tis the season to be jolly (even if the world is burning), and with it, our weekly media recommendation is here! This week we have Sue Ding, who is a documentary filmmaker and new media creator based in Los Angeles. She directs and produces nonfiction media—for platforms including The New York Times, PBS, and Netflix (latter of which released her new film "The Claudia Kishi Club"!!)–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It So Far?...
Dec 22, 2020•2 min
This week's pop culture recommendations come from those who change the world with them -- Janae Phillips, Director of Leadership and Education for the Harry Potter Alliance, who oversees the Granger Leadership Academy and the Fandom Forward study guides project, among other things. Shawn Taylor is one of the founders of Nerds of Color and a founding organizer of the Black Comix Arts Festival, a festival that highlights and promotes artists on the margins of the mainstream comic book industry. ––...
Dec 15, 2020•4 min
As winter approaches, we all need our list of media recs to keep us warm and safe during this season! This week's episode features Suzanne Scott, author of Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry. Also on the episode is Susan Kresnicka, a cultural and business anthropologist and president and founder of cultural research firm Kresnicka Research and Insights! –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with Henry, Colin and the How Do You Like It S...
Dec 08, 2020•2 min
This week we welcome Japanese Hip Hop scholar and reporter for Vice News , Dexter Thomas , and we talk a little bit about Vice News but mostly about Dexter’s outsider approach to journalism and the freedom he feels as a Black reporter at Vice in not being obligated to maintain the myth of a neutral perspective. Dexter shares his path to Vice, from college DJ to PhD in Asian Studies at Columbia University, freelance writer to the LA Times. We dive into hip hop music and culture in Japan, from its...
Nov 19, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 77
This week's episode of "What's Making You Sappy" is all about the legacy of Octavia Butler, an exceptional science fiction writer who wrote about gender and sexuality in bold new ways. With that, we have graphic novel and sci-fi recommendations from Shelley Streeby, Professor of Literature and Ethnic Studies at UC San Diego, Director of Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop, John Jennings, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies and a Collaborating Faculty Member in the Department...
Nov 17, 2020•5 min
This week we’re joined by two USC colleagues, Zoë Corwin of the Pullias Center for Higher Education and Annenberg’s Neftalie Williams , who share some of what they’ve found studying skateboarding culture and its impact on youth . Spoiler alert: the impact is overwhelmingly positive! From literally creating safer spaces for Black youth to fostering wide-ranging skills like problem-solving, media creation and diplomacy, to the integral roles of skateshops and skateparks in their communities, Zoë a...
Nov 12, 2020•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 76
Either to wind down from the crazy week we just had, or to take a well-deserved breather from the work that is ahead of us, "How Do You Like It So Far" team welcomes you to the second episode of our weekly media recommendations! This week, we have William O. Gardner, professor of Japanese language, literature and film at Swarthmore College. From animated features by the seminal Shinkai Makoto to a Russian novel set during the Black Death, Gardner introduces works of escapism and fantasy that see...
Nov 10, 2020•4 min
Welcome to the first episode of "What's Making You Sappy," Henry Jenkins and Colin Maclay's pop culture happy hour! For this week, we have recommendations from Clifford Johnson, a Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at USC and author of The Dialogues. We also have Dan Goldman, a writer, an artist, producer and founder and narrative lead of Kinjin Story Lab, whose work spans from graphic novels, TV and video games. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Share your thoughts via Twitter with ...
Nov 09, 2020•6 min
Most of us probably aren’t making an effort to hang out in public spaces lately, much less seeing them as playful – quite the opposite! But with a hopeful eye to the future, this week we’re joined by artist Reanne Estrada, Creative Director of Public Matters , a Los Angeles-based creative studio for civic engagement, and Benjamin Stokes , Assistant Professor at American University and Director of The Playful City Lab , to discuss the potential for – and benefits of – play in our public spaces. R...
Nov 05, 2020•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 75
Settle in for an extra-spooky Halloween episode! We’re joined by Michael Monello, one of the creators of The Blair Witch Project , Co-founder and Creative Director of Campfire Media and co-producer of the Video Palace podcast for Shudder , and Qiana Whitted, a professor English and African American Studies at the University of South Carolina and author of EC Comics: Race, Shock and Social Protest , which won the 2020 Eisner Award for best academic/scholarly work. Together, they discuss horror in...
Oct 29, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 74
We’re joined by Crystal Echo Hawk, founder and CEO of IllumiNative , a research-driven initiative created and led by Natives that is challenging negative narratives and supporting accurate and authentic portrayals of Native communities in pop culture. IllumiNative builds on Echo Hawk’s massive research project, Reclaiming Native Truth , which laid bare the shocking reality that nearly 80% of Americans (broadly defined) know little to nothing about Native peoples or aren’t even sure they even sti...
Oct 22, 2020•53 min•Ep. 73
If you like religion, sports or popular culture, this episode is for you, dear listener… and if you think you’re not interested in them, it is even more definitely for you! We are joined by Varun Soni , USC’s Dean of Religious Life and the first Hindu to serve as the chief spiritual officer of an American university. We traverse pandemic-driven transitions in higher education, acknowledging potentially lasting harms to students and others. We back out to the way the pandemic challenges our human...
Oct 15, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 72
This week, from deep in the San Fernando Valley, we’re joined by filmmaker Set Hernandez Rongkilyo. A passionate storyteller from a young age, Set’s early love of Anime and desire to be an animator transitioned into becoming a passionate storyteller, through documentary film and now other forms as well. Set discusses their resistance to approaching documentary subjects from a supposedly neutral perspective, as well as the tropes of tragedy porn and binary narratives of the undocumented immigrant...
Oct 08, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 71
the Furious , and in between, explores issues of documentary filmmaking, emerging media, and Asian-American identity. The episode features Sue Ding ... We begin our discussion of Ding’s recent film, The Claudia Kishi Club , by exploring how and why the character of Claudia from The Babysitters Club franchise spoke to a generation of Asian-American youth and inspired many to enter the arts, helping to pave the way for more recent representations of Asian-American characters in YA media and beyond...
Oct 01, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 70
This week, we offer the second of an ongoing series of episodes focused on fandom and fandom studies. Last week, we explored fandom’s relationship with the creative industries. This week, we are looking at fan-based activism. The episode features Janae Phillips, Director of Leadership and Education for the Harry Potter Alliance , who oversees the Granger Leadership Academy and the Fandom Forward study guides project, among other things. Shawn Taylor is one of the founders of Nerds of Color and a...
Sep 24, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 69
Welcome back to How Do You Like It So Far?, listeners! Today, we’re bringing you a time capsule of an episode: We recorded today’s conversation back in April, but it’s still as relevant as ever. Just don’t mind us thinking the coronavirus pandemic will be over in a couple of weeks. The episode features Suzanne Scott , an assistant professor at the University of Texas Austin and author of Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry . She is also the co-editor of The Rout...
Sep 17, 2020•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 68
Here are some of the references from this episode, for those who want to dig a little deeper: Scholarship on Online Learning: PACE: What California’s Leaders Must Do Next to Advance Student Learning During COVID-19 Ed Week: The Disparities in Remote Learning Under Coronavirus (early in the pandemic, but similar trends) McKinsey: COVID-19 and student learning in the United States: The hurt could last a lifetime Common Sense Media: Closing the K–12 Digital Divide in the Age of Distance Learning Ed...
Sep 10, 2020•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 67
See full show notes on our website: https://www.howdoyoulikeitsofar.org/episode-66-the-legacy-of-octavia-e-butler/ This week (tears our FINAL week), we continue our series on how science fiction thinks about disaster, especially in our new normal surrounding COVID-19 and the global pandemic. We examine the work and legacy of Octavia E. Butler, an exceptional science fiction writer who wrote about gender and sexuality in bold new ways. Henry and Colin welcome Shelley Streeby, Professor of Literat...
May 08, 2020•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 66
Welcome to another quarant-week How Do You Like it So Far? team! We are still super lucky to be able to stay safe with our friends and loved ones right now and hope you are all hanging in there. We know it is a tough time and we appreciate you making this podcast a part of your quarantin-ing. Basically, thank you for not socially-distancing yourselves from this podcast. We are continuing our sequence on science fiction during the COVID-19 crisis. This week, Colin and Henry welcome Bruce Sterling...
May 01, 2020•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 65
Thanks for joining us this week, How Do You Like it So Far? Crew! This week, Colin and Henry welcome William O. Gardner, a Professor of Japanese at Swarthmore College whose work has looked at the response of Japanese popular culture to real world disasters such as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Garder, who is releasing a new book called The Metabolist Imagination: Visions of the City in Postwar Japanese Architecture and Science Fiction, puts together architecture and science fiction. He...
Apr 24, 2020•59 min•Ep. 64
Welcome to our third virtual episode How Do You Like it So Far? fans! We are shocked we even remembered that since who even knows what day it is. Satur-Thurs-Wednesday? That sounds about right. Firstly, we hope you are all staying inside and safe during such uncertain times. Secondly, we’ve got a new episode for you all! This week, Henry and Colin welcome Alex Rivera, Director of Sleep Dealer and The Infiltrators, a hybrid-documentary that blends together traditional documentary elements with sc...
Apr 17, 2020•55 min•Ep. 63
This week we celebrate the launch of Henry’s new book, Comics and Stuff, with another installment of our series on comics. We have Mimi Pond, author and artist of 2014 New York Times bestseller Over Easy and The Customer is Always Wrong and Carol Tyler, author and artist of You’ll Never Know (which was compiled into Soldier's Heart) and Fab Four Mania. Both of these authors are discussed in Comics and Stuff. And the heart of the interview comes as they discuss here their relationship with the st...
Apr 10, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Ep. 62
We hope you are hanging in there, How Do You Like it So Far? crew. We want to thank you for turning to our podcast during such a difficult time in our lives. This period of self-isolation and social distancing is unprecedented and we know how tough this is for a lot of people. We appreciate your listenership and hope we are able to bring you a little something-something during this unique period. With that being said, this is our first episode which was recorded completely remotely. Our team is ...
Apr 03, 2020•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 61
First off, we hope each and every one of you are staying safe, washing your hands, and keeping somewhat sane during the Coronavirus outbreak of 2020. We are holding steady and continuing to record the podcast (remotely … so basically we don’t see each other except on computer screens, but thankfully technology has come in handy). We recorded this one on March 10th before things really went down and USC became a remote campus (we miss the Media Center, but it is necessary for our team to stay awa...
Mar 27, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 60
Oh, do we have a special episode for you How Do You Like it So Far? fans! This week, Colin and Henry discuss communities and their presence in digital and physical spaces and use old How Do You Like it So Far? episodes as talking points! We’ve made our very own podcast clip show! Henry and Colin were intrigued about the conversation opened up by Howard Rheingold an Patricia G. Lange on virtual communities. Through this springboard, they relate their own personal accounts of fandom and digital sp...
Mar 13, 2020•41 min•Ep. 59
It’s time for another new one How Do You Like it So Far? folks! Henry and Colin are joined this week by A.J. Christian, an Associate Professor of Communication at Northwestern University and Founder of OTV in Chicago. He discusses the concept of Open TV and the origin story of the group. He opens up about the ecosystem of TV and web production in Chicago and how that inspired him to start Open TV back in 2014. He dives deep into the problematic structure of “pilot season” and how its archaic sys...
Mar 06, 2020•52 min•Ep. 58
