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Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Nerds explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Episodes
195 episodes
Star Trek at 60: The State of Trek Today
Star Trek turns 60 and somehow the big story is this: the pipeline is drying up, the creative direction feels scattered, and the one show still on the air is starting to lose us. We talk through Strange New Worlds season four and why the consta...
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Star Trek at 60: NüTrek: Supplemental (Classic)
In the classic monologue we go into some of the details we didin't get to in our previous NüTrek breakdowns. We jump back into the debate around Star Trek: Discovery and the bigger question behind every prequel choice, where does “updating the ...
Star Trek at 60: NÜTrek Part 2
In another installment of our series celebrating Star Trek's 60th anniversary we bring you a classic episode breaking down the fanchises' 4th wave. We spend real time on the infamous spore drive, the way instant travel wrecks stakes, and how Di...
Star Trek at 60: NüTrek Part 1
In our ongoing celebration of Star Trek's 60th anniversary we revisit our commentary on Trek's 4th wave (as of last year). We dig into the real-world mechanics behind the J.J. Abrams era: studio splits, blockbuster incentives, and the creative ...
Star Trek at 60: Trekonomics (Classic)
To celebrate Star Trek's 60th Anniversary we thought we'd present a series of both old and new episodes that cover a wide swath of Trek topics. First up, an early show we did about the economics of the universe and how commerce works when you d...
Comic Books 101
Comic shops can feel welcoming and hostile at the same time, mostly because the language is a maze. We break that maze into simple, usable terms so you can walk in knowing what to ask for, what you’re looking at on the shelves, and how to avoid...
Classic: Artificial Intelligence Part 3
In a classic and timely episode on Artificial Intellegence we wrestle with the personhood problem. If a replicant can feel fear, build memories, form attachments, and fight to live, what exactly makes them “less than” besides a corporate defini...
Classic: Artificial Intelligence Part 2
In a classic - yet timely - episode we continue digging in to what we call Artificial Intellegence these days and what it's been throughout pop culture. We sort through the terms people blur together, like consciousness, sentience, and self-awa...
Pets and Companions, Part 2
An animal companion isn’t just cute, loyal, or marketable. The best ones force a moral choice, expose a character’s blind spot, or act like nature’s voice when humans get too comfortable with their own excuses. We dig into why animal companions...
Classic: Artificial Intelligence Part 1
While we're deal with some crazy life stuff we thought we'd revisit a rapidly changing topic in Artificial Intelligence. We walk through the foundations that make AI feel inevitable: formal reasoning, the Church Turing thesis, early neural netw...
Pets and Companions
Why do pets and animal companions in fiction feel so immediate, so universally legible, and so devastating when a story takes them away?We pull threads from everywhere, comic book pets like Krypto, the daemon companions of His Dark Mate...
The BC Fourteen Cinematic Universe
Bigfoot in space, Krampus as a demonic Christmas weapon, a clone of Alistair Crowley, reptilian Stalin, Satan pulling strings, and a title card that promises a fight that may never happen. That’s not a mad lib we wrote, it’s the kind of chaos y...
Sci-Why? F.U.! - Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
* Redownload if necessary*Greetings, fellow traveller. For our Sci-Fi Channel series finale we bring you Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a short-lived but brilliant British parody show that never really got its due. (Sorry we wer...
Sci-Why? FU! - Max Headroom
Max Headroom - a glitchy cyberpunk face that seemed like a novelty in the 1980s - somehow became a pop culture anchor through commercials, parodies, and wall-to-wall brand exposure. If you mostly remember New Coke or a weird talking head you sa...
Slash Fiction
We step away from our sci-fi channel mini-series for Pride Month to give slash fiction the spotlight it deserves, because it is not just “spicy fanfic.” It is a long-running tradition of readers and viewers naming queer subtext, building commun...
Disclosure
In a break from our mini-series we’re taking a hard look at why UFO disclosure and UAP transparency keep feeling “right around the corner” while delivering almost nothing on which people can agree. Along the way we touch the viral political cha...
Sci-Why? F.U! - The Tragic Tale of Voyagers!
In one of the last episodes of the series we take a hard look at Voyagers!, the 1982 time travel series that barrels from setup to action in seconds. If you’ve ever loved Quantum Leap, Doctor Who, Back to the Future style causality, or TVA styl...
SciWhy? F.U! - LEXX
We’re continuing our Sci-Fi Channel origin series by digging into LEXX: a cult space opera about a cowardly non-hero, an undead assassin, a love-obsessed robot head, and a former love slave flying a living ship built to destroy planets. It’s si...
Sci-Why? F.U!: The Universe of Gerry Anderson
In our ongoing series we’re tracing Jerry Anderson’s strange, essential legacy and why early Sci Fi Channel programming kept looping Supercar, Stingray, and Space: 1999 into the brains of American kids who had no idea what they were watch...
Preview: Gerry Anderson (sorta)
This is a preview of our ongoing series on the origins and programming of the Sci-Fi Channel. I promise we do actually talk about Gerry Anderson in this one.
SciWhy? F.U!: William Shatner's TekWar
William Shatner's TekWar is a so-so cyberpunk cop story that somehow grew into novels, comics, trading cards, syndicated TV movies, a USA Network and Sci Fi Channel series, and a PC video game that many people still call one of the worst ever m...
Sci-Why? F.U.: Misfits of Science (Re-Download, if Possible)
A superhero team that rides in an ice cream truck? Courtney Cox?? The Predator??? sounds like a joke until you actually watch it. We go deep on Misfits of Science, the short-lived 1985 NBC sci-fi superhero series that later found a second...
Memmory Gamma: Gul Dukat
Gul Dukat ruled Terok Nor with an iron fist, measuring Bajorans like inventory even as the occupation began to crack under resistance and political pressure. We unpack how fear of assassination, obsession with control, and a need to be admired ...
The Sci-Fi Channel Part 2
We start with the big thesis: the Sci-Fi Channel is an early masterclass in niche marketing, built on the belief that sci-fi fans are loyal and underserved. From there we dig into the credibility play of bringing in Gene Roddenberry and Isaac A...
Classic: Highlander Part 3 - Gabbin' Macleod
In our classic third installment of the Highlander franchise (because of the reported first footage of the remake premiering) we really have a blast talking about all the other fun stuff we'd been waiting to cover. Believe it or not...