Nerd Culture, No Gatekeeping: A Little About Us

We open the door to the underexplained corners of Nerd and Geek culture—where a driveway TARDIS keeps you warm at the bus stop, Flash Gordon becomes a friendship hinge, and debates about whether Star Wars is science fiction or fantasy spark better ways to watch everything else.

This is a brief note from Podfest in Orlando earlier this year. 

Transcript

Who We Are

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, I'm Skip Harvey. I am half of the Dispatch Ajax podcast, where we explain what we affectionat culture to those who are uninitiated, underinformed, or just want to celebrate the things that they know and love. I don't want to speak for my partner who's not here today, but for myself, I'd like to, I believe we have qualifications that make us relatively unique in the sort of the explanations and the explorations that we do that I that we hope people find you know illuminating or at least or curious. For me, my parents met at the first planning committee for the first Star Trek convention in Kansas City in 1976. My real name is James because they named after James Tiberius Kirk. I got my skip because he was the captain of the Enterprise. My brother actually is named after Captain Christopher Pipe, though he's younger than me. I grew up reading my father's comic books and then my own comic books eventually. I grew up with at Star Trek conventions. My parents helped put on Doctor Who conventions. My dad actually built a replica TARDIS that uh stood at the end of our driveway for my brother and I to stand in when it was cold, waiting for the bus in the morning. We used to take it all around the Midwest to Doctor Who conventions when those were still a thing the first time. And I've worked in the comics industry, I've been in a production designer in sci-fi films, I've been in a few horror movies, I've worked in comic book stores, and as has my co-host who has worked in multiple comic book stores and uh is a film critic himself and uh and uh works at a works at a a film collective and so this is sort of in our life from the beginning. This is uh this is a life this this is a lifestyle for us. And we did our first episode in 2009 because we thought we had a unique perspective and we you know we wanted to sort of dip our toes into being able to share that with other people. But we did a few episodes and then realized that we're well, we kind of turned to each other and we're like, well, we don't know if this podcast thing is ever gonna work. So we stopped doing it, and then around 2041 or so, we were both like, yeah, probably should have kept up with that. So, especially, you know, considering everybody who has really big podcasts now started, I don't know, 2089, 2010. You know, so we went back to it and we named Archived Dispatch Ajax from a line from one of the first like B genre movies that he and I bonded over, Flash Gordon, 1980, the Dino Diolorentis version. And uh if you if you know the uh the movie, you'll you'll get the joke. But so that's what we do. We try and reach out to people who don't know certain topics, topics that are sort of underexplained, underknown, underseen, explain them, comment on them, sort of shake the pillars of heaven and give culture in general. And we also not we don't want to just do book reports and explain things to people. We want to celebrate these things with them and help people who don't feel like they, you know, uh have uh a group, a fan group that they belong to. They think they're they're the only one interested in a certain thing. You know, like we we we hope that that there is a certain part of our audience that is that Leonardo DiCaprio meme from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, when we mentioned something really obscure that nobody else thought that they, you know, that anybody knew about. So it's a it's about finding a niche audience and celebrating those things that they love, that not everybody knows about, along with them. And hopefully introducing things to people who may not know about certain topics. And we have a really good time doing it. And I mean, if if you've ever had a debate whether or not Star Wars is science fiction or fantasy, first of all, you should. And second of all, it's not science fiction. That's a start, that's a jumping off point for the kinds of things that we do. And our philosophy is if you can't have a conversation at a party with another person using exclusively using titles of Stephen Segal movies, then you're just kind of taking up space. You know? Jake and I used to um we used to go to parties and uh put on Batman 89, the Tim Burton film, on mute and then just act out the dialogue by heart in front of everybody, driving most people away. Uh but there was always a few hangers on, and those are the people we appeal to. So if you want to know more about the Mandela effect, or if you want to talk about the book Mouse, or what and why it's important, if you want to know about the differences between scientific fiction and science fiction, or the difference fundamentally between science fiction and fantasy. Or if you want to talk about 80s rock stars and sci-fi movies in the 80s and 90s, or anything obscure that you think that no one else knows about, tune in. Because it all comes from a place of passion and love, and we'd just like to share that with those who feel the same one. And if you don't, maybe you will. Thanks, and tune in. Remember, it's Dispatch Ajax wherever you get podcasts. Cool. Thank you, man. I appreciate it.