Make Me A Nerd with Mandy Kaplan

TruStory FM

Hey folks. Mandy Kaplan here. I’d like to share a bit about my intentions and mission for MMAN if you’ll indulge me. You will? Huzzah! Look, I am a lot of things. I’m a writer, actress, mother, and lover of musicals and cats, but NOT Cats, The Musical. Give me a little bit of credit, would ya? So...throughout my life, I’ve been surrounded (and intrigued) by all things nerd. A sister who plays D&D, a Star Wars-obsessed husband, friends who love anime, comic books, video games, and...well, you get the picture. Somehow, I have always held it all at arm's length. Not to get too deep, but maybe I never thought I was smart enough to follow it. Or maybe I have control issues and have never been able to embrace fantastical things like dragons and time travel. Until now! So, with an open mind and heart, I am ready to join this massive (and beautifully inclusive) club and GEEK THE #%$ OUT! It’s time for all my wonderfully strange friends to baptize me into NERD-DOM. Please join me on this journey. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover or remember a side of yourself along the way. Or at least make fun of me as I try!

  1. Prince with Kyle Olson and Pete Wright

    8 Jun

    Prince with Kyle Olson and Pete Wright

    Here’s a fun fact about Prince Rogers Nelson: that wasn’t a stage name. Prince was his actual, legal, on-the-birth-certificate first name. Once you accept that a man named Prince grew up to become the artist known as Prince, you’re already most of the way to accepting everything else. The 8,000 unreleased tracks in a literal underground vault. The candles balanced precariously on the mixing boards. The 2 a.m. phone calls to musicians who had to be at Paisley Park by sunrise because the basketball game just ended and inspiration had struck.Pete Wright and Kyle Olson have feelings about this man. Deep, well-organized, road-tripped-to-Minnesota-for-the-Purple-Rain-musical feelings. They’ve come to walk Mandy through the empire — the side projects, the symbol, the Warner Brothers war, the Rolling Stones opening slot that ended in chicken bones — and to make a case that the artist most people think they know is actually three or four artists they don’t. There are detours into Sinéad O’Connor, Joni Mitchell, Michael Jackson ping pong, and one of Mandy’s most committed pre-adolescent performance choices. Press play.Guest SpotlightPete Wright and Kyle Olson are TruStory FM family — Pete is the engineer and producer behind much of the network (and Make Me a Nerd itself), and Kyle is a writer, playwright, and his frequent co-conspirator. Together they host Craft and Chaos, a podcast about staying creative through difficult times, and The Marvel Movie Minute, where they break down Marvel films five minutes at a time. Kyle’s plays can be found at the New Play Exchange (when he remembers to put his name on them — long story, listen to Craft and Chaos). Pete just released his debut work of fiction, a novella called Lattice, available at itsmepete.com, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.The PlaylistPete and Kyle’s Prince playlist on YouTube Music — the listening companion for this episode.Songs Mentioned“My Name Is Prince” — Prince & The New Power Generation“Darling Nikki” — Prince & The Revolution“When Doves Cry” — Prince & The Revolution“Let’s Go Crazy” — Prince & The Revolution“Little Red Corvette” — Prince“Raspberry Beret” — Prince & The Revolution“1999” — Prince“Delirious” — Prince“Head” — Prince“Sister” — Prince“When You Were Mine” — Prince“I Feel for You” — Chaka Khan (written by Prince)“A Case of You” — Prince (Joni Mitchell cover)“Nothing Compares 2 U” — Sinéad O’Connor (written by Prince)“Nothing Compares 2 U” — Prince (original)“Manic Monday” — The Bangles (written by Prince)“Sugar Walls” — Sheena Easton (written by Prince as Alexander Nevermind)“The Glamorous Life” — Sheila E. (written by Prince)“A Love Bizarre” — Sheila E. (with Prince)“Stand Back” — Stevie Nicks (co-written with Prince)“Kiss” — Art of Noise feat. Tom Jones (Prince cover)“Round and Round” — Tevin Campbell (from Graffiti Bridge)“How Come You Don’t Call Me” — Alicia Keys (Prince cover)“Thieves in the Temple” — Prince“New Power Generation” — Prince“Get Off” — Prince & The New Power Generation“Tick, Tick, Bang” — Prince“Tamborine” — Prince“Scandalous” — Prince“Venus de Milo” — Prince (Parade) Albums MentionedFor You (1978)Prince (1979)Dirty Mind (1980)Controversy (1981)1999 (1982)Purple Rain (1984)Parade (1986)Sign o’ the Times (1987)The Black Album (1987/1994)Batman (1989)Graffiti Bridge (1990)Love Symbol Album (1992)

    59 min
  2. Shoot Again! Talking Pinball with Clark Hill

    25 May

    Shoot Again! Talking Pinball with Clark Hill

    Pinball looks like two buttons and a ball. It is not two buttons and a ball. It is a 300-pound machine with layered rules, competitive leagues, wrist injuries, a flow state, and — this will surprise you — an expectation that you will physically grab the machine and move it while playing. That last part is legal. Encouraged, even. This week, Mandy's new neighbor Clark Hill, who carries quarters at all times in case he passes a machine in the wild, joins her to watch Shoot Again, a documentary that is essentially pinball propaganda, and to explain why none of this is as simple as it looks.The conversation covers flow states, wizard modes, the Dolly Parton machine, a proposed cats-themed machine (the cats, not the musical), and at least one incident involving a toddler on the glass. Press play.GUEST SPOTLIGHT Clark Hill is a theater nerd, Magic: The Gathering player, pinball league competitor, and Mandy's new neighbor — a convergence of circumstances that the universe has clearly been building toward. He is currently active in a pinball league in Van Nuys, California, carries quarters on his person at all times, and has a deep personal relationship with the work of game designer Keith Elwin. He has also, on at least two occasions, had to ask a father to remove a toddler from the glass surface of a pinball machine.Connect with the ShowFollow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensMake Me a Nerd runs on curious people. If that's you, the inner circle is at makemeanerd.com/join — it's where the show goes deeper between episodes, and where Mandy's most embarrassingly enthusiastic fans have found their people. --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.

    46 min
  3. Watch Me Fly… Serenity with Krissy Lenz

    11 May

    Watch Me Fly… Serenity with Krissy Lenz

    Here is a fact about Firefly, which is to say the beloved Joss Whedon space western that aired on Fox in 2002: the network, in its infinite wisdom, decided to air the two-hour pilot — the one designed to introduce you to the entire world, its characters, and the general vibe of a Western in space — not first, but somewhere in the middle. This is approximately like hosting a dinner party and opening with dessert, except the dessert is also on fire, and also you've invited the guests' most confused relatives. The show was cancelled. The fans — who call themselves Browncoats, because of course they do — responded not with acceptance but with a multi-year grassroots campaign that eventually produced a movie (Serenity, 2005), a documentary about the making of said movie (Done the Impossible), and a fan-organized party circuit called Shindigs that still runs today. This week, returning champion Krissy Lenz walks Mandy through all of it.The movie itself, Mandy discovers, is tonally bewildering in the best way — part heist, part Star Wars homage, part horror film, part comedy, with Chiwetel Ejiofor showing up as the most civilized, polite, and unnervingly calm assassin in the 'Verse. ("He believes in this better world that even he's not welcome in," Krissy notes, which is, frankly, the kind of villain thesis statement most movies wish they could pull off.) Summer Glau is doing ballet-grade choreography in combat boots and a slip dress. Alan Tudyk is delightful, briefly, and then — for contractual reasons Krissy helpfully explains — permanently unavailable. And Nathan Fillion, the internet's favorite convention dad, spends the climax in a physical fight that looks suspiciously like the end of every Star Wars movie you've ever seen.Along the way, the conversation takes its requisite detours: how to separate the art from the artist when the artist is Joss Whedon and the allegations are what they are; the rehabilitation economy around Louis CK; whether Mal is charmingly brusque or just, on closer 45-year-old inspection, kind of a dick; and the enduring question of whether Joel McHale should be allowed to play anyone other than Joel McHale. By the end, Mandy has agreed to watch the series, consider attending a Shindig, and do a future episode on Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog — which is, by any reasonable metric, a successful recruitment.Find KrissyThe Most Excellent 80s Movies PodcastGank That DrankNeighborhood Comedy Theater (Mesa, AZ)Connect with the ShowFollow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensMake Me a Nerd runs on curious people. If that's you, the inner circle is at makemeanerd.com/join — it's where the show goes deeper between episodes, and where Mandy's most embarrassingly enthusiastic fans have found their people. --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.

    52 min
  4. No Time To Play… Ender’s Game with Erica Cochran

    4 May

    No Time To Play… Ender’s Game with Erica Cochran

    Mandy Kaplan has been handed a Hugo-winning, Nebula-winning, Mormon-authored military sci-fi classic about a six-year-old being psychologically tortured into committing accidental alien genocide, and reader, she has THOUGHTS. This week, her son Casey's high school chemistry teacher — the proud Trojan, theater company founder, and science-and-theater double-nerd Erica Cochran — walks Mandy through Orson Scott Card's 1985 novel Ender's Game, a book that predicted the internet, iPads, online political discourse, and rogue AI with such unsettling accuracy that you kind of want to check if Card also has next week's lottery numbers.Before they even open the book, there's The Orson Scott Card Problem to address — namely, that he is an anti-gay-rights activist who appears to have written a scene in which his six-year-old protagonist convinces a naked bully to also get naked before their fistfight. Mandy has some thoughts about this. Erica has some thoughts about this. Everyone has some thoughts about this. They proceed with their "art vs. artist" disclaimer firmly in place, with Mandy reserving the right to get in a few jabs. She gets in several.What unfolds is a joyful, slightly unhinged, deeply thoughtful conversation about a book Mandy read every word of and still couldn't quite follow ("I got a lot of beeps and boops"), while Erica — who has reread the series multiple times and done "a lot of therapy" — sees the full emotional architecture underneath. They dig into why so many of these dystopias center on children (the innocence, the smallness, the inability to consent), why Ender is Valentine with the capacity to be Peter, why the government commissions a third child from a family whose parents are, diplomatically speaking, not geniuses, and whether the book's climactic religion-founding is a defense of the Book of Mormon or a sly admission that anyone can make up a religion. Also discussed: Scientology's youth promotion track, the 2013 movie (Erica: "two thumbs down"), the inexplicable prevalence of the insult "fart-eater," and the fact that Petra is doing her absolute best and does not deserve Mandy's Gen-X scolding.By the end, Mandy is converted — not to loving the book, exactly, but to seeing what she missed in it. Which is, honestly, the whole point of this podcast.Connect with the ShowFollow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensMake Me a Nerd runs on curious people. If that's you, the inner circle is at makemeanerd.com/join — it's where the show goes deeper between episodes, and where Mandy's most embarrassingly enthusiastic fans have found their people. --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.

    1hr 1min
  5. Moon Prism Power, Make Me a Gorgeous Podcaster: Sailor Moon with Jonny Lee Jr.

    20 Apr

    Moon Prism Power, Make Me a Gorgeous Podcaster: Sailor Moon with Jonny Lee Jr.

    Sailor Moon was a cartoon made for five-year-old Japanese girls. It aired in America at 6 AM, required an eight-year-old Jonny Lee Jr. to set his alarm for 5:30 every morning — before DVR, before streaming, before any child should be conscious — and quietly became one of the most important pieces of queer representation an entire generation had access to. So, naturally, Mandy had never seen it.Jonny's back to fix that. Mandy was assigned 14 essential episodes and negotiated down to eight, but arrives with strong opinions anyway — about Tuxedo Mask ("He's so hot"), her talking-cat wish fulfillment, and the transformation sequences that feel like auditions for a Broadway musical. (There have been over 40 Sailor Moon musicals in Japan. Neither Mandy nor most of the listening audience will have been prepared for that sentence.) Along the way, they dig into why the American dub turned a gay male villain into a woman, how male directors wrote boy-craziness into the anime that didn't exist in the original manga, and the Snow White connection behind those enormous anime eyes.And so we have a conversation about why gay men gravitate toward stories about powerful women, what it meant to find yourself in a kids' show when there was almost nowhere else to look, and how a series marketed to kindergartners smuggled in real themes about identity and transformation.Guest Spotlight Jonny Lee Jr. is a lifelong anime devotee and one of Make Me a Nerd's original guests, returning this time to make the case for the show he's loved since he was eight years old and jet-lagged in Taipei. His enthusiasm for Sailor Moon is the kind that reorganizes a kid's sleep schedule and never fully lets go. --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.

    54 min
  6. From Basement Nerds to Amazon Prime: The Improbable (and Inevitable) Rise of Vox Machina with Hem Brewster

    13 Apr

    From Basement Nerds to Amazon Prime: The Improbable (and Inevitable) Rise of Vox Machina with Hem Brewster

    What do you get when you take eight adult friends — all professional voice actors — who've been playing a home D&D game for years and decide, on a lark, to put it on Twitch? You get Critical Role, a phenomenon now in its fourth campaign, spanning roughly a decade of streaming and somewhere between "a lot" and "an almost unhinged number" of hours of content. Hem Brewster, lead producer at Blighthouse Studio and a Critical Role early adopter, joins Mandy all the way from Iceland to break down The Legend of Vox Machina — the Amazon Prime animated series that took that basement game, ran a Kickstarter asking for a couple hundred thousand dollars, received millions in days, and then somehow turned it into a 100%/94% Rotten Tomatoes-rated show that works equally well for lifelong nerds and people who just showed up for the fart jokes. (Both are valid. The fart jokes are good.)Hem walks Mandy through the full Critical Role ecosystem — campaigns, modules, homebrew, the difference between a GM who knows every rule and a GM who's right for your table — and explains why Vox Machina nails something most adaptations fumble: you never need to know what a spell is called to understand what it does, because the show just shows you the giant hand. They also dig into the three episodes Hem chose for Mandy: the pilot's shotgun-approach introduction (Lord of the Rings fake-out, musical number, immediate R-rating — all of it in episode one), the glorious chaos of episode seven's triceratops incident, and the season finale's earned emotional heaviness. Plus: Sam Riegel himself answers two questions, Mandy learns what a class is, and Grog is confirmed a beautiful being.If you've been nerd-curious but felt like D&D was a door you couldn't open — well, Grog has thoughts on that. Specifically that not everything is a trap. Specifically that it very much was a trap. The point stands: this is the episode that makes the door feel a lot less locked.GUEST SPOTLIGHTHem Brewster is the lead producer at Blighthouse Studio, a collective of creators from across the US and beyond making escapist audio and actual-play content. Their shows include:The Lucky Die — a D&D actual play, with Hem as game masterThe Sprouting — a Call of Cthulhu eldritch horror actual playPlus additional fantasy shows and talk shows under the Blighthouse umbrellaFind everything at blighthouse.studio, including work from Blighthouse friends and collaborators outside the main umbrella.Connect with the ShowFollow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensMake Me a Nerd runs on curious people. If that's you, the inner circle is at makemeanerd.com/join — it's where the show goes deeper between episodes, and where Mandy's most embarrassingly enthusiastic fans have found their people. --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.

    53 min
  7. Movie Friends Michelle Rubinstein and Seth Vargas on the Strange Legacy of Ed Wood

    6 Apr

    Movie Friends Michelle Rubinstein and Seth Vargas on the Strange Legacy of Ed Wood

    Here is a fun fact about the worst movie ever made: it was declared the worst movie ever made by people who hadn’t seen it. In 1980, the Medved brothers published The Golden Turkey Awards, a book crowning Plan 9 from Outer Space as cinema’s all-time nadir — a designation selected, in part, by a 16-year-old. The book was a hit. The label stuck. And for decades, that’s how Ed Wood got remembered: not as someone who made movies, but as a cautionary tale about making them badly.The thing is, when you actually sit down and watch Plan 9 — with its styrofoam UFOs, its shower-curtain cockpit, its graveyard that looks like a particularly ambitious mini golf course, and its dialogue (“Well he’s been murdered, and somebody’s responsible”) — something unexpected happens. You have a great time. You laugh. You get chills. You start asking questions. Which is, arguably, more than most movies manage.Mandy watched Plan 9 from Outer Space for the first time, then immediately watched Tim Burton’s 1994 love letter Ed Wood back to back, and showed up to this conversation practically sparking. Her guides are Michelle Rubinstein and Seth Vargas of the Movie Friends podcast, and together they trace the whole improbable arc: from Ed Wood’s shoestring productions (shot in single takes, cast with whoever was around, funded by a landlord who did not make his money back) to the Medved book, to Tim Burton using his post-Batman cultural cachet to make one of the most gorgeous black-and-white films of the nineties.Michelle derails the episode in the best possible way with a one-minute TED talk on Vampira — real name Maila Nurmi, Emmy nominee, friend of James Dean, and practitioner of a papaya-based waist-shrinking technique that Mandy immediately wants to try. Seth, who has been an Ed Wood evangelist since his teenage years working in a magic store, makes the argument that Ed Wood’s films aren’t bad so much as alive — confounding, curious, and genuinely impossible to ignore. Seventy-five years later, he’s right.Guest SpotlightMichelle Rubinstein and Seth Vargas are the hosts of Movie Friends, a podcast built on the idea that film discussion doesn’t have to be gatekeepy or exhausting — it can just be two people who genuinely love movies talking about them like friends. Together they’ve developed a three-tier rating system — schmoovie, movie, or film — that tells you everything you need to know about their sensibility. Find them anywhere you get your podcasts.Links & NotesMovie Friends podcastTotal Betty Podcast NetworkReferenced in This EpisodePlan 9 from Outer Space (1957, dir. Ed Wood)Ed Wood (1994, dir. Tim Burton)Glen or Glenda (1953, dir. Ed Wood)The Golden Turkey Awards by the Medved brothers (1980)Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992, Ed Wood biography)Vampira / Maila NurmiCriswellBela LugosiMartin Landau (Best Supporting Actor, Ed Wood)The Bride! with Mandy Kaplan (Mandy’s guest episode on Movie Friends)Spaceballs (1987, dir. Mel Brooks)The GodfatherYuri on Ice with Zehra Fazal (Make Me A Nerd)You Must Remember This (podcast)Christine JorgensenConnect with the ShowFollow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensMake Me a Nerd runs on curious people. If that's you, the inner circle is at makemeanerd.com/join — it's where the show goes deeper between episodes, and where Mandy's most embarrassingly enthusiastic fans have found their people. --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.

    56 min
  8. Nate McWhortor Makes Mandy a Future Folk Fan

    30 Mar

    Nate McWhortor Makes Mandy a Future Folk Fan

    Somewhere between O Brother Where Art Thou and the Lumineers' stomp-and-clap era, a folk comedy duo from the East Village made a movie about two aliens who abandon a mission to destroy Earth because one of them heard music in a Costco and simply could not get over it. The film cost approximately nothing, shot on the streets of Brooklyn with real bystanders as involuntary extras, features Dee Snider of Twisted Sister as a bar owner for reasons no one can fully explain, and won Fantastic Fest in Austin. It is called The History of Future Folk, and it is delightful in a way that Mandy, who went in skeptical, was completely unprepared for.This week, Nate McWhortor ... Phoenix improviser, minor league baseball veteran, hair metal radio devotee, and self-described "glue guy" ... brings the movie to Mandy's attention, and also brings a drinking game. They drink for every mention of the planet Hondo, every visible budget cut (there are many), and every Dee Snider scene (there are enough). What they find underneath all of that is a genuinely beautiful piece of folk music, a surprisingly unpredictable plot, and a love letter to New York that doesn't have enough extras to fill its own bar scenes. If you've never heard of Future Folk, you're about to understand why some people feel like this movie was made specifically for them.Nate McWhortor is a Phoenix-based improviser at the Neighborhood Comedy Theater and co-host of Gank That Drank, the Supernatural rewatch podcast where every episode comes with a drinking game. A sports nerd turned theater kid turned 16-year improv veteran, Nate is exactly the kind of guest who shows up with a drinking game, an Arizona tourism angle, and a genuine passion for a 2012 cult film that the algorithm sent him and he never forgot. Gank That Drink is currently heading into its final season of Supernatural — which means now is the time to get in on it. Find Nate and Krissy Lenz at the Neighborhood Comedy Theater at nctphoenix.com.Links & NotesThe History of Future Folk (2012) — available on YouTube; reportedly back on NetflixFuture Folk — the band --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.

    57 min
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About

Hey folks. Mandy Kaplan here. I’d like to share a bit about my intentions and mission for MMAN if you’ll indulge me. You will? Huzzah! Look, I am a lot of things. I’m a writer, actress, mother, and lover of musicals and cats, but NOT Cats, The Musical. Give me a little bit of credit, would ya? So...throughout my life, I’ve been surrounded (and intrigued) by all things nerd. A sister who plays D&D, a Star Wars-obsessed husband, friends who love anime, comic books, video games, and...well, you get the picture. Somehow, I have always held it all at arm's length. Not to get too deep, but maybe I never thought I was smart enough to follow it. Or maybe I have control issues and have never been able to embrace fantastical things like dragons and time travel. Until now! So, with an open mind and heart, I am ready to join this massive (and beautifully inclusive) club and GEEK THE #%$ OUT! It’s time for all my wonderfully strange friends to baptize me into NERD-DOM. Please join me on this journey. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover or remember a side of yourself along the way. Or at least make fun of me as I try!

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