The Captain's Log

Episode 293. Top questions this week: If "space opera" is a narrative genre, are there also "land operas?" Can you really taste subtle notes of oak in that wine, or are you just making that up? Will the four Beatles movies have four popcorn buckets that combine to make one big bucket? Why aren't there any original, non-franchise superhero stories on film? We also discuss Marvel's five-hour livestream of chairs, if the fight to save Coyote vs. Acme will give it a box office bump, trailers for One Battle After Another and Tron: Ares, the new Spider-Man trilogy, the crime thriller Prisoners, and the biggest Paul Bettany you've ever seen.

Episode 292. Formula 1 racing begins a new season this spring, and we have Brad Pitt's F1 movie this summer, so it's time for Kyle to explain what the sport actually is! With a beautifully constructed slideshow, we give a primer to newbies about how the race works, fun facts about each driver, the evolution of the teams, and answers to Melissa's questions like "do they play jock jams at the races?" and "are there mascot costumes?" We also briefly discuss new films in theaters this month and what's on YouTube's own YouTube channel.

Episode 291. We ask what you should do if you find the image of Jesus, a celebrity, or a Pokemon in a food. How do you preserve it? Who authenticates it? Who would pay $70,000 for something like that? Kyle catches us up on Daredevil and is two degrees of separation away from a Narcos character. Melissa brings us a real horse performance and tries to understand high society at the opera and symphony. We discuss our Oscar predictions, the future of James Bond, a new Green Lantern, and a very specific and perhaps useless piece of exclusive news about Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning.

Episode 290. Kyle nominates a new Luigi. Melissa completes another Wet Awards. We both insist you watch Hundreds of Beavers! We also discuss local Oklahoma City sports, regattas, what if F1 had theme nights, a corn musical, dough hooks, blindly filling out an Oscars ballot, and taking your Gundam models to a nice dinner and seating them at the table with pretend food.

Episode 289. When podcast is on a bagel, you can have podcast anytime! We use the Super Bowl as a launching pad into a discussion on our favorite commercials, from the big game and otherwise, from the nostalgic '90s to today. Topics include: campaigns that made one commercial so good they just ran it for years, playing a board game in an abandoned factory, kids who interrupt school to do a berries 'n' cream, Jack Box's human wife, and whether you loved or hated the Quizno's spongemonkeys. We also discuss the Grammy's, the Fantastic Four trailer, an entry point to decades of Star Trek, Thai iced tea, and when people in movies have normal teeth instead of movie star teeth.