We hope you’re having a great summer and staying cool! We’ve been on a break for the month of July, but we’re BACK and ready to bring you some brand new episodes. Before we get into that, we want to say THANK YOU to everyone who came out to our live show at The Rio Theatre in Vancouver at the beginning of July!!!!
It was such a fun night, made possible by our listeners! We sang, we laughed, we had paddles made, and we even learned a thing or two. Special thanks to everyone who helped make our VERY FIRST LIVE SHOW happen, including the wonderful folks at The Rio, our smart and talented friends Helen Zaltzman and Martin Austwick, and the supremely talented Auto Syndicate (who performed our theme song live!!!).
Not to mention, this show was extra special because it was the first time the entire team was together in person. <3 See below for some highlights from the show and our time together!
Hugs,
Hannah, Marcelle, Coach, Zoe, and Gaby
Material Girls has been on a summer break, but we've been dropping episodes in our feed that feature Hannah and Marcelle on other podcasts you know and love!
In a throwback to 2023, Marcelle visits our friends at The Real Questionto explore the question “Should I quit drinking?”
Hannah was a guest on Gender Playground (ever heard of it??) to discuss proactive kinship and how dinosaurs serve as inspiration to kiddos.
Next, we re-shared some shows that Hannah and Marcelle were both on, including Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. In that episode, they speak with Matt Potts about the theme of ceremony. In Gender War Games, they discuss the activation of white womanhood with friend of the show Cristen Conger. Our break wrapped up with an episode of ’s where Marcelle and Hannah discussed the collapse of the monarchy.
All of these episodes are fun and insightful, and we hope you enjoyed them while you waited for your favorite class to be back in session!
Speaking of…yesterday we released a new episode about The Hunger Games and Frames of War. In this conversation, Hannah and Marcelle dig into representations of violence, resistance movements, and the normalization of child death. They then explore how Suzanne Collins' dystopian series engages with the concept of "grievability" and they consider The Hunger Games' immersive marketing campaigns that cemented the work as a mainstream cultural phenomenon.
Note that this episode connects the fictional world of Panem to real-world issues of representation and human rights, drawing parallels between the text and the genocide in Gaza.
August Watch Along!
Our watch along this month will be Saturday, August 16th at 11am PST / 12pm MST / 2pm EST. We’ll be watching Easy A!
Join our Patreon at the $10+ tier so you can watch with us!
And That’s a Wrap on Gender Playground Season Two!
A Message from Coach
Tomorrow we release our final episode of Gender Playground, Season Two! I want to take a moment to shout out the incredible commitment to this project shown by our Associate Producer, Reese Carr, and Marcelle’s co-host, Raimi Marx. We would not have made a second season without the hours they both put into thinking about the show, co-designing a production schedule that worked for everyone, and showing up to do the very real work of guest prep and scripting.
Thanks to everyone who has supported this show! Please keep sharing it and leave us reviews wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Hannah called us “five bitches in a car” and, like, yeah…we really were!
Behold: an assortment of music the team listened to during our time together, mixed with our pre-live show playlist of daddy songs. Listen here!
Yesterday, while driving home from Monck Provincial Park, I found out two things: first, that Neko Case has a new album coming out this fall, and second, that my friend Holly-Kate was completely unfamiliar with Case's discography! Cue a mandatory car listen to Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Middle Cyclone, and The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You. (I would have also played Hell-On, but we ran out of time.) Fox Confessor is one of my all-time top albums, but in terms of showcasing Case's unbelievable vocals, nothing beats "Furnace Room Lullaby." I adore a murder ballad, and Case's voice always sounds a bit like she's luring you into the woods. If you're not already a Case listener, then you have an unbelievable treasure trove of music ahead of you. If you are, then maybe you'll join me in giving her a thorough relisten in anticipation of her new album.I am so excited to tell you about the romance novels I have been reading lately. Imagine Pedro Pascal, Keanu Reeves, and Ryan Gosling going on an annual boys trip in which they stay up late talking about their feelings and supporting one another through unexpected romantic antics. Sounds good, right??? I stumbled across the first novel (in what I'm guessing will be a trilogy) because I found the title simply too charming to pass by: it's called Earls Trip by Jenny Holiday. It's a regency romance about a group of three earls (technically one of them is merely a viscount but don't worry about it) who are the closest of friends and who get together once a year to let go of their troubles and bond over their feelings. Only, unexpected romance enters the scene and the gentlemen respond delightfully. These novels are exactly the kind of breezy summer romances I love, so with the charming pun for a title I would have read it anyway — but I loved the male characters so much! Archie, Effie, and Simon are just the good-est, softest boys, and they truly love one another. Their respective progressive values are surely anachronistic, yet also totally believable in the setting. In the second novel, Manic Pixie Dream Earl, for example, Effie confesses to his friends that he hasn't been going to sleep because he has lately been afflicted by traumatic nightmares in which he revisits his father's abuse. In response, that night Archie crawls into bed with Effie so that our protagonist can sleep soundly, knowing he's safe with his best friend. Like, are you kidding me? I literally cried. The books are also really smutty. This is important to add because I was actually going to send copies of the books to my grandma (they are just so lovely, I think she would adore them!) until I got to the sexy parts... I just don't know that I need my grandma to know that I read such smutty books... Anyway, if you are looking for a breezy, sexy, summer romance starring the softest of soft boys, I implore you to check out Jenny Holiday's Earls Trip and its sequel, Manic Pixie Dream Earl.I’ll be honest, I’ve been watching The Gilded Age. I wish I had more to say on it than this: “carrie coon so beautiful, houses so pretty, colonizing rich people with not real problems.” I’m having a good time and also I don’t know that I recommend it per se. I did also just see the new Naked Gun and while Akiva Schaffer is one of my favs, I wanted the film to have more jokes! Go back and watch the originals? It is August now and that means it’s BBQ SEASON! And let me tell ya, a thing about me is that if this whole writer/academic/publishing thing doesn’t work out for me my secret plan b is to become a pit master. So when it’s bbq season you better believe I will be grilling anything and everything. But for me, the star of every bbq meal is the corn on the cob. So this month, I recommend making corn as much as possible. You can toss em directly on the grill with olive oil and let them get charred, you can lovingly tuck them in foil with pillows of butter and salt and grill them that way, you can boil them in a pot and then finish them off on the grill—- the possibilities are endless (and don’t even get me started on seasonings)! And then you can eat the delicious little corn gems straight off the cob or you can cut them off (preferable for those with braces)!! However you corn, I support you!Life is all about treats! I lost my full-time job at the beginning of the summer, so here is a non-exhaustive list of free treats you can enjoy if you’re also trying to save some money and/or fill yourself up. The definition of “treat” is expansive—your mileage may vary. Treats I’ve been loving lately: watching 3-5 episodes of NBC’s ER (1994-2009); having friends over for dinner and a movie; supporting unions; taking a walk in the sun; reading while a summery ambience video plays on TV (like this one); and then supporting unions again because you just didn’t get enough of it the first time! <3
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