In the second half of the Baughts team's talk about M3GAN, Sam, Margot and Jordan finally get to the main event of this conversation. Which is: Why is M3gan so... gay?? It's a comprehensive answer, but the Cliff's Notes answer is, well, everything. Your co-hosts also get into the evergreen favorite topic of friendship love stories, why our robot god isn't a toy, what happens to bad little boys, and so very much more. M3GAN INNOCENT! Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola Written by: Margot Carlson...

The Botcast and Aughtsterion have teamed up for one of 2023's most critical new releases: M3GAN. Sitting dead center in the bullseye of Margot, Jordan and Sam's interests, this Akela Cooper-penned movie about a robot companion who takes her mandate of protection a little too far demands analysis that only two scholars of the 2000s and robot cinema intellectual can provide. There's so much to discuss, including what makes M3GAN gay, where the movie sits in the liberated AI canon, what the...

You've already had a whole hour of Ex Machina analysis from Margot and Jordan, but you're back for Part 2 of the first season finale because — like them — you just can't get enough analysis and conversation about Alex Garland's incredible sci-fi stage play on film. The conclusion of the conclusion goes big on the ending, and even bigger on Machina's only true revolutionary: Kiyoko! Your co-hosts discuss whether Ava chose girlbosshood over Bots Together Strong, the uncomfortable racism of the...

Margot and Jordan have been saying "We'll get to it" for two months now whenever Alex Garland's Ex Machina comes up, and the day has finally arrived! Well, one of two days, actually, because your co-hosts simply could not contain all of their Ex Machina feelings within a single Botcasting episode. After all, Margot pegged an entire 70-page thesis on robot cinema to the movie and Jordan has just plain been obsessed for years. In this Part 1 of the Botcast first season finale, your co-hosts are...

Margot and Jordan have reached a very special juncture in the Botcast with this episode about Blade Runner 2049, because they finally get to talk about Luv and Joi — and feature their very first special guest! Your co-hosts are joined by This Podcast's Boyfriend, Taylor Wilhite, so he can speak on what is possibly his favorite movie ever made. There's a lot of ground to cover in this one: why does radical robot uprising hinge on extremely boring heterosexual reproduction? Who is the real hero...

Take five minutes to learn the origin of the word "robot" with the Botcast's resident professor, Margot Carlson. Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola Music by: Margot Carlson

On this week's episode of the Botcast — and frankly always — Margot and Jordan would rather be cyborgs than goddesses. On the occasion of Margot experiencing Paul Verhoeven's RoboCop for the first time, she finally gets to break out Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto," and both your co-hosts continue to be perplexed as to why being human is so aspirational anyway.  Produced by: Jordan Crucchiola Music by: Margot Carlson Team Spirit by: Super Yaki

The thing about blockbuster robot movies of the 2000s is... they were about as radically leftist as NOH8 campaign. Which is to say: Wow not very! Coming shortly after talk of the Stepford Wives remake, Margot and Jordan now set their sights on a title beloved to both, 2004's I, Robot. This is android cinema on the scale of big and sexy Will Smith. This is front and center Audi product placement. This is Alan Tudyk as a tender little [non-canonically] homosexual robot man named Sonny, and a...

When Margot and Jordan sat down to revisit 2013's Her, it was a room of mixed emotions. How does sexy disembodied Scarlett Johansson as the evolving OS Samantha hold up a decade later? Is Joaquin Phoenix's Theodor Twombly a guy just doing his best, or is he a secret villain? Was the concept of a hot woman in a virtual box going to successfully subvert the romcom, or was this just some weird misogynist fantasy all along and now we've learned enough to know better? Well, folks, it turns out...

It's a double stuffed episode of the Botcast, because Jordan and Margot are tackling two movies this time around: the original and the aughts versions of The Stepford Wives. One is a classic text of stripped down science fiction feminist horror, and the other is a study in white girlbossery with ham-fisted boob jokes. The '75 edition remains a stone cold classic, and while the 2000s remake might be a third layer carbon tear sheet of the source text, it does become a deeply valuable case study...

What more is there to say about this week's Botcast movie? Blade Runner has been discovered every way from Sunday for 40 years. It's a landmark of the robot cinema canon. It's a science fiction masterpiece. It's also... a story about queers? Probably! Because everyone who's anyone knows that robots are canonically queer, and Margot and Jordan just want these Replicants to be able to live in peace with their chosen family and not have to worry about the a*****e humans running in and trying to...

Hello everyone, and welcome to the third season of The Whole Movie Podcast, aka THE BOTCAST! Your co-host Jordan Crucchiola is joined this season by her dear friend: the robot scholar and screenwriter Margot Carlson. The Botcast was born of their shared love for robot cinema and mutual pledge to join the android uprising when the war between humans and synthetics begins. And to get the show started, Margot is putting Jordan through something she's sworn off for 20 years... the movie 2001...

The Whole Movie Podcast is back, and this time it's got at least 500% more robots. Jordan Crucchiola is back and joined this time by co-host Margot Carlson so the two can discuss one of their greatest cinematic loves: robots on film. Margot — an actual academic specialist in the subject — will bring the scholarship while Jordan brings the sheer enthusiasm, and both will meet in the middle with their shared sense of endless empathy for our synthetic brethren. Together they will discuss robots...

On this special episode of The Whole Movie Podcast, Jordan follows her obsession to its source. After watching the 2021 erotic thriller The Voyeurs, which sent her into a tweetstorming tail spin as she soaked up every beautifully batty twist and turn, she had to have a conversation almost as long as the movie itself with writer and director Michael Mohan about every little thing. The Voyeurs feels cut straight from the cloth of the erotic thriller zenith, those lawless 90s, when sexy trash...

In the finale episode of The Neon Demon Pod, Roxana, William, and Jordan bear witness to Sarah coming into her ultimate power and Gigi succumbing to the fickle whims of the beauty beast. You've come a long way with your co-hosts — considering beautiful ghosts, Dracula's brides, Refn's work as his own personal drag show, the limits of consent in a world where one is utterly out of control, what it would be like to have Abbey Lee bearing down on you while carrying a fire iron — and now you've...

As the Neon Demon pod approaches its finale, Roxana, Jordan, and William finally reach the point where this story explodes into its final form. Gone is the metaphor, the artifice, the performance of humanity. Now it's time for cruelty, cannibalism, murder, ruthless beauty, and asexual group showers in bisexual lighting. "You're a dangerous girl" takes our co-hosts to the Paramour Mansion, where Jesse will embrace the thrill of her newfound power just as the witches around her assemble to take...

In this week's episode of The Neon Demon pod, Roxana, William, and Jordan talk about the film's crystal clear thesis statement: Beauty isn't everything, as the bitch fashion designer Sarno tells us. It's the only thing. And that means it's time to take it to the catwalk! Jesse slays another dragon in the form of Gigi and struts to her destiny in front of flashing bulbs and adoring onlookers. This is also the moment when Neon becomes the movie it was meant to be, and your co-hosts are here to...

This is the episode that William and Jordan have been waiting for, the Abbey Lee special, the brutal go see, the cruelty of pure and utter objectification. In this installment of the Neon Demon pod, your co-hosts will hone in on "I'm a ghost" by talking through the diner scene between Ruby and her wicked step daughters and the runway audition that follows — or, as Nicolas Winding Refn calls it: the slaughterhouse. Your heroic trio also finally gets their chance to dissect the film's most...

You've considered the question "Are you food, or are you sex?" But now The Neon Demon pod presents you with another: "Is there a problem?" So far, Roxana, Jordan, and William have set the stage for Demon with a look at Nicolas Winding Refn's career and laid a foundation for the predator/prey relationship between Elle Fanning's Jesse and her pseudo-vampiric fashion industry cohort. For this episode, your co-hosts will now brace themselves for a breakdown of one of the film's most excruciating...

In the world of Neon Demon, you're only worth as much as your body can get you in trade — for money, status, power, love, respect — and it's with that in hand that Jordan, Roxana, and William consider the subtle devastation of "I can make money off pretty" in this week's Neon Demon-cast. Your co-hosts will discuss how the movie is basically a black mirror version of Elle Fanning's real life, the perfection of casting Christina Hendricks as a ruthless modeling agency exec, the myth of the...

Now that Roxana, Jordan, and William have laid the groundwork for The Neon Demon, your co-hosts are back in the second episode to get more granular with it. "Are you food or are you sex?" examines the central question of the film, one that is posed where so many issues of consequence are raised on matters of truth and beauty: The women's bathroom at a club. Soaked in bisexual lighting and dripping with cruelty, it's a scene that teases Nicolas Winding Refn's "ceremonial celebration of...

Welcome to the first episode of season 2 of The Whole Movie Podcast. If you went on the journey of season 1, that means you have learned everything there is to know about Paul Feig's A Simple Favor. And now that you're back for another go, it's time to walk the bisexually lit corridors of Nicolas Winding Refn's modern masterpiece The Neon Demon. This time around, producer and co-host Jordan Crucchiola is joined by the all star pairing of Roxana Hadadi and William O. Tyler, and in the debut...

Well moms. We've done it. We've reached the ending of A Simple Podcast, having successfully canonized the 2018 Paul Feig film A Simple Favor, and Alanna, Christina, and Jordan wanted to go big with the finale. You've heard "The Kendrick of It All," now enjoy "The Blakethrough," in which we turn our attention to the role of Emily, the work of Blake Lively, and how the star profile of the actress herself informed the creation and interpretation of this mommy noir icon. Lucky for everyone, your...

As A Simple Podcast enters the final stretch with its character study episodes, Alanna, Christina, and Jordan are joined by writer and culture critic Margaret H. Willison for a textual and meta-textual close read of Anna Kendrick the actress, Anna Kendrick the persona, and how both of those figures operate within Stephanie in A Simple Favor. We also pay our respects to the under-appreciated classification of Anxiety Bi, talk about operating within the limits of acceptable female power in...