Purely Academic with Jonathan Lack & Sean Chapman

What looked like it might have been a quiet week for the podcast turned out to be a very busy one, as a surprisingly eventful Comic-Con brought big news and reveals for Doctor Who, Star Wars, Harry P…

This week, one of our biggest projects of 2018 comes to a close as we complete our journey through the original six Star Wars films with Episode VI – Return of the Jedi. Easily among the most iconic …

Marvel’s third film of the year arrived this week with Ant-Man & The Wasp, an imperfect and slight film that is nevertheless an absurd amount of fun. We give it our traditional in-depth treatment, bu…

It’s a good-old fashioned grab-bag this week, as we cover a week’s worth of news – including Doctor Who getting a new composer, Halo coming to TV, and Sony’s continued refusal to play nice with other…

This week, we return to the world of Star Wars in our ongoing series of in-depth retrospectives on the original six films, this time arriving at the best and most iconic Episode of them all: The Empi…

Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey turns 50 this year, and in celebration, Warner Bros has been touring a brand new 70mm print of the classic film around the United States, which arrived here in…

The third day of E3 2018 shows brought us Nintendo’s showcase, which was almost entirely focused on the reveal of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for Nintendo Switch. The game looks like it will deliver t…

Day 2 of E3 2018 brought us big showcases from Sony and Ubisoft, and a completely baffling non-event from Square Enix, and we recap and analyze all of it on today’s show. We dive deep with the big lo…

It’s that time of the year again: E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, has kicked off in Los Angeles, and we’re doing daily podcasts this week to catch up on all the news, announcements, gaffes, de…

With E3 2018 just around the corner, we check in on what we’re expecting from all the major players – Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, and Bethesda – before next week’s big show. This has been…

After just 5 months, Star Wars is back in theaters with Ron Howard’s Solo: A Star Wars Story, and we have complicated feelings about it! We both like the film to varying degrees, but what both its co…

This month, we reach the end of our journey through Doctor Who history – for now, at least – by diving into the audio adventures of the series’ least well-known but paradoxically most prolific Doctor…

This week, we got another major superhero film in Deadpool 2, a surprisingly excellent sequel that is funnier, zanier, and weirdly more heartfelt than the first film, fueled by great performances and…

This week, we return to a galaxy far, far away for our next in-depth Star Wars discussion, and after going through all three prequels in previous episodes, we finally arrive at the film that started …

After giving general spoiler-free impressions last week, we dive deep with the new God of War, discussing the story, characters, themes, and gameplay in a wide-ranging discussion that reveals just ho…

Marvel’s biggest movie yet has landed in theaters, and we have a lot to say about the surprisingly great Avengers: Infinity War, a movie that has no right working, and yet somehow works amazingly wel…

We have quite the grab bag for you on the show this week, as we discuss topics as wide-ranging as the passing of beloved Japanese director Isao Takahata, a true pioneer of the medium, to something as…

After revisiting the first two Star Wars Prequels earlier this year, we finally reach the third and final film in the controversial trilogy, and once again give it a thorough critical reevaluation. R…

This month, our journey through classic Doctor Who reaches a culmination point, as we drop in on the original series’ excellent final creative push, with the run of Sylvester McCoy’s wonderful Sevent…

It’s a loose, fun, freewheelin’ grab-bag style episode on the show this week, as we talk about a whole host of recent movies, games, and TV shows. Jonathan reviews Ava DuVernay’s very good (and very …