The Incomparable Mothership

Break out the stars and stripes, put on your tap shoes, crawl into your shame hole, and join us for a very patriotic edition of Old Movie Club. We discuss the musical “1776,” which stars KITT from “Knight Rider” and the guy from “The White Shadow,” and the biopic musical “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” which stars James Cagney.

We celebrate our 200th episode with this mega-sized installment. We discuss what it means to have geeky enthusiasms (and whether we should grow up), and then listen to some reader feedback. Plus there’s a draft, some beer, and special guest stars.

In this episode we recap our take on the TV season that recently concluded. In a segment with little to no spoilers, we largely discuss shows we like, including “Orphan Black,” “Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD,” and even “The Blacklist” and “The Good Wife.” Then at the end of the show we slip into spoiler territory and talk about season 4 of “Game of Thrones.”

In this episode we convene a panel of women who love geeky stuff to discuss portrayals of girls and women in geek media, how girls and women are received in geek culture, and the books, movies, comics and TV shows that do it right.

We love Pixar, and we’re a bunch of creative professional types. So as you can imagine, we devoured “Creativity Inc.”, by Pixar president Ed Catmull. Is it a business book or an anti-business book? How do you foster creativity? Is Pixar’s formula one that provides safety while preventing works of staggering genius? How much is a director or writer the author of a Pixar movie, and how much is the studio itself? And is the wild success of “Frozen” proof of anything?

Every year Scott and Jason read all the Hugo Award-nominated novels, which supposedly show off the best science fiction has to offer. That hasn’t always gone well, so this year they’ve read the eight novels nominated for the Nebula Awards—and recruited three other SF podcasters to join them in the fun. We discuss all eight novels with extremely light-to-no spoilers, so it’s safe to listen. And the good news? All eight of these novels are pretty good!

Following in the footsteps of our video-game draft, it’s time for us to select some of our favorite computer games of all time. Real-time strategy! Arcade style! Text adventures! From the earliest days of video games up to the present, we’ve got it covered. Now if we could just figure out what was in those crates…

Grab your black cat and portable radio, climb on your mom’s broomstick, and join us for a king-sized discussion of Hayao Miyazaki’s classic animated film “Kiki’s Delivery Service.” This film features a climactic scene featuring an out-of-control dirigible, so you know we love it.

The casting for “Star Wars: Episode VII” has been announced, and so our team of interested “Star Wars” fans has arrived to break down the returning actors, the new faces, and our hopes for the future of the franchise. Plus we talk Kremlinology and Soviet industrial design, lament a bag of villains, and confuse screenwriters with pasta.

Danger, Will Robinson! It’s time to think outside the bots. We follow up our computer draft with a draft of favorite robots, androids, and other artificial intelligences. Also, we debate a whole lot about what makes a robot different from a computer. Kill all humans!