Purely Academic with Jonathan Lack & Sean Chapman

Our August episode of Purely Academic is one of our busiest recordings to date, as Sean and Jonathan break down how they spent their summer vacations, and talk about the start of the new school year.…

After looking back over all the previous attempts to bring Marvel’s Fantastic Four to the big screen last month, we review the introduction to Marvel’s first family into the MCU: The Fantastic Four: …

We’re back sooner than usual, with a special episode focused entirely on James Gunn’s SUPERMAN! The film is the official launch of the new DCU, but much more importantly, it’s an actual Superman movi…

For the July installment of ‘The Monthly Stuff,’ we break down the news of Xbox’s latest round of devastating layoffs, give fuller impressions of the Nintendo Switch 2 after a full month of play, and…

With Marvel’s ‘first family’ finally joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe next month in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, we thought it would be a good time to look back at the theatrical history of …

It’s a jam-packed ‘Monthly Stuff’ episode for June as we give our first impressions of the Nintendo Switch 2 at launch and react to the latest season of Doctor Who. First, Sean gives us his review of…

Purely Academic continues its new format, with our second episode for May focusing on the month’s topic: In this case, we’re celebrating the release of DOOM: The Dark Ages with a retrospective on the…

Purely Academic has a new format starting this month, where we’ll be releasing two episodes a month: One focused on a specific topic, and the other featuring all the other up-to-date variety of News,…

This month, we’re trying something new by releasing the individual segments once a week, to spread the mountain of content we recorded out over the whole month. And that continues with this month’s m…

This month, we’re trying something new by releasing the individual segments once a week, to spread the mountain of content we recorded out over the whole month. And that concludes with the month’s la…

This month, we’re trying something new by releasing the individual segments once a week, to spread the mountain of content we recorded out over the whole month. And that continues with this week’s ‘S…

This month, we’re trying something new by releasing the individual segments once a week, to spread the mountain of content we recorded out over the whole month. And that begins with a super-sized new…

For March, we’ve put together a really fun grab-bag of an episode, including a topic segment where we answer a big pile of listener mail from our amazing audience members! Sean and I respond to your …

It’s February, the month of love, and we’re celebrating it in style, first by talking about one of our most beloved (and oft-referenced) movies, Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane, and then …

For our first episode of 2025, we take a look back at the very best in video games from 2024, with Sean and Jonathan both presenting their picks for the 10 greatest video games of the year, a diverse…

In this special bonus episode, Jonathan Lack counts down the Top 10 Films of 2024! 

You can read the text of this episode, and see links to full reviews of every film discussed, at https://www.jonatha…

For our December episode, we go deep with Atlus’ outstanding new JRPG, Metaphor: ReFantazio. Like Persona 5, the team’s previous game, this is a work deeply involved in the political and existential …

It’s our busiest episode yet, with a giant six-hour extravaganza to get you through the month of November. Our main topic concerns the Gamera Heisei trilogy from the 1990s; directed by Kaneko Shusuke…

For the October installment of Purely Academic, Jonathan and Sean embrace the spooky season by talking Halloween – specifically, the recent Halloween reboot/sequel trilogy directed by David Gordon Gr…

For the first episode of this new incarnation of the podcast, Jonathan and Sean introduce (or reintroduce) themselves to listeners by interviewing each other, with a mix of questions equal parts insi…