Why Is This Not a Movie?
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Why Is This Not a Movie?
Every week, author and pop culture writer Mike Vago pitches stories that Hollywood needs to bring to the big screen, with guests from the pop culture writing world. Part of the Subject Podcast Network. Visit subjectmedia.org for more podcasts, radio shows, and student journalism!
Episodi recenti
60 episodi
A Man Named Doll w/Jason Woodbury
Jonathan Ames' detective novel A Man Named Doll, and its sequel The Wheel of Doll combine the playfulness of Bored to Death (which Ames created) and Y...
Concrete w/Ted Anderson
Paul Chadwick's long-running comics series Concrete is about a man who's transformed into a hulking cement-like monster, who wants to use his newfound...
The Nice Guys 2 w/Scott Myers
2016's The Nice Guys was a terrific action comedy, with a smart script by Shane Black, and two charismatic, bankable leads in Ryan Gosling and Russel...
Rube Waddell w/Randall Lotowycz
Rube Waddell was a pitcher in the early days of baseball with one of the most colorful stories in all of sports. In 1903 alone, he threw 302 strikeout...
Spider-Man PS4 w/Preeti Chhibber
We're back to kick off season 5 with Preeti Chhibber, multitalented podcaster (Women of Marvel, Desi Geek Girls, Tar Valon or Bust) and author (A Jedi...
Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League
1984's Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eight Dimension was a fun, pulpy mess of a sci-fi adventure, which promised us a sequel... which we never got. Nearl...
The Snubby Awards w/Douglas Laman
We take a break from the usual format this week to present the Snubby Awards, given to the best films and performance that were not nominated for an O...
E.D. Morel and the Congo Free State w/Orrin Konheim
In the 1890s, a British shipping clerk named Edmund Morel noticed the Belgians were shipping vast quantities of rubber from the Congo, then a Belgian...
The Plot Against FDR w/Natalia Megas
Franklin Roosevelt was wildly popular when he was in office, and is universally acknowledged as one of our greatest presidents. But in 1933, not every...
Out in Old Hollywood w/Shane Harris
Billy Haines was a silent movie star who made the transition to sound, but when the studio head made the openly gay actor an ultimatum — a sham marria...
The Man Who Challenged the Olympics to a Rematch w/John Teti
Boo Morcom was heavily favored to win the gold in pole vault at the 1948 Olympics. But he was playing hurt, in the rain, and missed his shot at the go...
The Con Artist with HIV w/Kim Daly
Mark Olmstead found out he had HIV at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, when the disease was a death sentence. Figuring he had nothing to lose, he p...
Starlight Tours w/Tom Murphy
For forty years, police in Saskatchewan, Canada were in the habit of arresting Ingdigenous men for minor offenses, or sometimes no reason at all, leav...
The Worst Movie Ever Made w/Nathan Rabin
In 1966, an El Paso theater actor bet his screenwriter friend he could produce a horror movie all on his own. The result was Manos: The Hands of Fate,...
Wyatt Earp in Hollywood w/Scott Bunn
Legendary Old West lawman Wyatt Earp fought at the O.K. Corrall, and then rode off into the sunset... but the story doesn't end there. Scott Bunn, who...
Robert Smalls
Robert Smalls was an enslaved sailor on a Confederate ship, until late one night, he hijacked the ship, picked up his family and his crew's, and saile...
The Most Dangerous Town in the West
In the 1870s, traveling by train through Palisade, Nevada was a heart-stopping experience. It was a Wild West hive of scum and villainy, with a consta...
The Spectre w/Nick Zaino
DC Comics has had a mixed record at the movies, but Boston Globe writer Nick Zaino, host of the podcast Department of Tangents, and first-ever WITNAM...
Leta Powell Drake w/Tony Cava
In 2020, a local TV host from Nebraska gained internet fame for a montage of her hilariously blunt interviews with A-list actors from the '70s and '80...
Killing Kate w/Kate Ranta
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so this week we have a true-life story from Kate Ranta, author of Killing Kate: A Story of Turning Abuse...
The Movie Controlled by Your Brain w/Richard Ramchurn
Something different this week, as we're talking about something that already is a movie: The Moment, a film that's edited in real time by an audience...
The Wright Brothers w/Matt Voigts
Welcome back to Season 3 of Why Is This Not a Movie?! Every schoolchild knows the story of the Wright Brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk. But less w...
Undercover in North Korea w/Suki Kim
We wrap up Season 2 with a remarkable story, as journalist and author Suki Kim tells us about the six months she spent undercover in Kim Jong Il's Nor...
Kate Warne and the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
In 1856, a 23-year-old woman named Kate Warne walked into the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency and demanded a job. They had never hired a woman to be...
Who Killed Dorothy Kilgallen w/Orrin Konheim
Dorothy Kilgallen was a beloved entertainment reporter, a regular on What's My Line, when she took a hard left turn into crime reporting. She covered...
Wait For Me w/Bill Gentile
In the 1980s, American journalist Bill Gentile travelled to Nicaragua during the Sandanista revolution, and El Salvador during that country’s decade-l...
Kim Jong Il Kidnaps a Movie Industry w/Wyatt Dunn
In the Golden Age of Korean Cinema in the '60s, director Shin Sang-ok and actress Choi Eun-hee were making acclaimed films as a glamorous power couple...
The Russian Artistic Revolution w/Doug Woycechowsky
The Russian Revolution wasn't just a political and economic revolution. In the brief moment between the idealism of a revolution that overthrew a mona...
The Wrath of Genghis Khan
History remembers Genghis Khan as a violent brute, destroying everything in his path. But the truth is more complicated than that. Ostracised from his...
The Chronicles of Prydain w/Scott Bunn
Friend of the show Scott Bunn (Run That Back) returns so we can co-pitch an adaptation of Lloyd Alexander's delightful YA fantasy series The Chronicle...
The Dyatlov Pass Incident w/Lauren Thoman
In 1959, nine friends went on a hike in Russia's Ural Mountains and never returned. Their bodies were found with a bizarre set of injuries, including...
My Fugitive w/Nina Gilden Seavey
During the Vietnam War, a student protest at Washington University in St. Louis erupted into violence, with a campus ROTC building being burned down....
Kill Shot w/Natalia Megas
In 2012, a fungal meningitis outbreak killed 100 people and infected 750 more. Two doctors at the Center for Disease Control raced against time to sto...
The 53rd Annual Snubby Awards
A quick special episode, in which we honor the best films and performances of 2020 not nominated for an Academy Award. Hear who won this year's Best S...
The Coke Heist w/Kyle Ryan
It's not a secret that Coca-Cola's original formula included cocaine. But what's less well-known is that the soft drink still uses coca leaf, just not...
The Gallery Murders w/Emerson Rosenthal
A serial killer is targeting underappreciated artists. The twist: he's their art dealer. Emerson Rosenthal, a script consultant who's instagram accoun...
The Erfurt Latrine Disaster w/Annie Rauwerda
In 1184, two German nobles had a land dispute. They presented their case to the King at a monastery in the town of Erfurt. Dozens of nobles packed int...
LSD High w/Jon Reid
LSD came into vogue in the 1960s, but it came back in a big way in the '90s, as teenagers embraced the cheap, long-lasting high it produced. Jon Reid,...
Able Danger w/Shane Harris
In the year 2000, a secret military task force discovered Al Qaeda operatives working in the U.S., possible including the 9/11 hijackers. They claim t...
The Doctor who Disappeared on 9/11 w/Tom Murphy
2,750 New Yorkers died in the World Trade Center on 9/11, but in 2004, the number was updated to 2,751. Sneha Philip was a young doctor who lived in l...