Special Topics in Media
Special Topics in Media Studies is a lecture-based podcast that tackles media history one artifact at a time. Each season of the series we will investigate a different mass media theme, medium, or programming genre. While our focus is educational (it is an academic podcast after all), we tailor our conversations toward a broad audience of media enthusiasts.
Episodes
135 episodes
Film Listology: The Recalibration Countdown (#107-76)
The time has come. In this "Recalibration Preview", Special Topics in Media examines the data sets that feed into the tabulation process defining the "Film Listology" methodology. Cohost Scott McMurry provides listeners with the cleare...
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Season 8
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Episode 41
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1:31:44
Film Listology: Recalibration Preview!
The time has come. In this "Recalibration Preview", Special Topics in Media examines the data sets that feed into the tabulation process defining the "Film Listology" methodology. Cohost Scott McMurry provides listeners with the c...
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Season 8
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Episode 40
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32:31
Film Listology: #76 - A Streetcar Named Desire
In the "Film Listology" entry to Special Topics in Media, hosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry evaluate the legacy of Elia Kazan's adaptation of the Tennessee Williams literary stageplay of the same name,
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Season 8
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Episode 39
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1:05:29
Film Listology: #77 - Metropolis
This week in our "Film Listology" season of Special Topics in Media, Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry explore the innovation and influence of Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction silent film Metropolis. Can silent c...
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Season 8
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Episode 38
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1:21:08
Film Listology: #78 - The Dark Knight
Continuing the "Film Listology" seasons of Special Topics, the dialogic duo strategize the placement of the #78 film on the Super Index(TM), Christopher Nolan's 4-quadrant blockbuster released by Warner Bros. in 2008,
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Season 8
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Episode 37
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1:10:45
Film Listology: #79 - Amadeus
In this "Film Listology" episode, hosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry compose an argument both for and against reading the 1985 Academy Award winner for Best Picture as culturally significant to the history of film. Directed by Milos For...
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Season 8
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Episode 36
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1:06:19
Film Listology: #80 - WALL*E
In this episode, hosts Garret Castleberry and Scott McMurry assess the cultural significance of the 2008 Pixar Animated feature film WALL*E. ...
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Season 8
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Episode 35
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38:12
Film Listology, Reveal Episode! #80-76
In our January RETURN to the Film Listology experiment, Scott McMurry reveals the next five films currently ranked by the analytics super index. What movies emerge as the Dialogic Duo debut the #80-76 entries? Should each of these be canonized ...
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Season 8
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Episode 34
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54:10
Future Shock Voices: Michael Harris (Author, Come With Me If You Want to Live)
In a world where science fiction breeds serious introspection...In this episode, host Garret Castleberry connects with science fiction film and media scholar Michael Harris to discuss his book
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Season 3
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Episode 20
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1:17:20
Future Shock Voices: Keith M. Johnston (Author, Science Fiction Film: A Critical Introduction)
In a world where science fiction breeds serious discussion...In this episode, host Garret Castleberry connects with science fiction film and media scholar Keith M. Johnston to discuss his book Science Fiction Film: A Critical Introd...
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Season 3
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Episode 19
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1:26:45
Future Shock Film: Student Roundtable, Part 2
In a world where free speech converges with film studies, one group of students fight the pandemic and enter the "forbidden zone" whereby their thoughts on Future Shock Cinema enter the public sphere. In "Part 2" of our student roundtable, we s...
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Season 3
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Episode 18
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38:39
Future Shock Film: Student Roundtable
In a world where free speech converges with film studies, one group of students fight the pandemic and enter the "forbidden zone" whereby their thoughts on Future Shock Cinema enter the public sphere. We sit down with students from the class im...
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Season 3
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Episode 17
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57:51
Future Shock Film: Arrival (2016)
In a world where language gains new meaning, Special Topics looks back at a film that imagines forward to a point in which "first contact" with extraterrestrial life posits the unexpected arrival of the future. In this entrant to our "...
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Season 3
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Episode 16
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45:23
Future Shock Film: Tenet (2020)
In a world where time marches forward...and backward, one protagonist stands between an open future and an open war on the past. John David Washington stars in the mind-bending blockbuster that never was,
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Season 3
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Episode 15
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2:04:25
Future Shock Film: Oblivion (2013)
In a world where science fiction spectacle overwhelms science fiction narrative, one team emerges from deep space to confront the uncanny moviegoing valley. Amidst a career pivot from grounded dramas and espionage action films, global superstar...
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Season 3
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Episode 14
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1:00:59
Future Shock Film: I Am Legend (2007)
In a world where society suffers the consequences of global biological contamination, one individual survives as the bridge between our recognizable past and an undetermined future. Box office superstar Will Smith stretches his action-comedy co...
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Season 3
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Episode 13
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1:04:04
Future Shock Film: Greenland (2020)
In a world where extinction events pose an imminent threat, one family enacts their survivalist instincts in a desperate ploy to stay alive. From director Ric Roman Waugh and starring his frequent leading man counterpart Gerard Butler,
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Season 3
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Episode 12
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1:04:02
Future Shock Sound Bite: Literature Review
In this interlude "Future Shock Sound Bite", host Garret Castleberry briefly overviews key academic scholarship selected to accompany the educational approach to studying future shock science fiction film. Future Shock sound bites will function...
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Season 3
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Episode 11
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18:45
Future Shock Film, Interlude
In a world where future shock seemed certain to wind down, one professor will rise from the ashes to teach it again. And bring pizza!In this "Interlude" to the Special Topics in Media season three focus on "Future Shock Fi...
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Season 3
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Episode 10
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28:40
Communicating Fears in Film: "Beetlejuice"..."Beetlejuice Beetlejuice"!
October is upon us! With scary movie season under way we continue our "Communicating Fears in Film" spotlight theme. Host Garret Castleberry is joined by Kyle Hammonds to analyz...
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Season 7
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Episode 27
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1:24:37
Simon Bacon - Horror Scholar, Part 2 (Future Folk Horror/Communicating Fears Crossover)
In this crossover episode, the Special Topics October spotlight series on "Communicating Fears in Film" continues with Part 2 of our conversation with horror scholar Simon Bacon, editor and contributor of the anthology Future ...
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Season 7
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Episode 26
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42:21
Simon Bacon - Horror Scholar (Future Folk Horror/Communicating Fears Crossover)
The Special Topics "Communicating Fears in Film" theme RETURNS with a 2-week limited engagement this October! First up, we transition from our Future Shock Film focus on Terry Gilliam's
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Season 7
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Episode 25
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33:58
Future Shock Film: The Zero Theorem (2013)
In a world where the search for cataclysmic equations unlock universal truths, one dystopian data analyst faces apocalyptic existential crisis. Completing his unofficial dystopian tryptic, famed director
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Season 3
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Episode 9
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1:02:50
Future Shock Film: Roundtable Reflection
In a world where free speech converges with film studies, one group of students fight the pandemic and enter the "forbidden zone" whereby their thoughts on Future Shock Cinema enter the public sphere. Following the accelerated fil...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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1:15:34
Future Shock Film: The Hunger Games (2012)
In a world where civil war long ago reshaped the Americas as we know them, the "Districts" of Panem grow restless in a fixed resource economy. Their only raison d'tre to be satiated by the annual games in which they embrace a lottery system tha...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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1:41:42
