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. Nate McWhortor Makes Mandy a Future Folk Fan

    1 HR AGO

    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
  2. It’s Manga Madness with Helen McCarthy!

    23 MAR

    It’s Manga Madness with Helen McCarthy!

    Manga has a first-impression problem. It's enormous, genre-defying, visually foreign, and comes wrapped in the kind of devoted fan energy that makes newcomers feel like they've wandered into the graduate seminar by mistake. Mandy Kaplan — who did her manga homework at the Department of Motor Vehicles while her son got his learner's permit — is here to represent everyone who's been lurking at the door. Her guide is Helen McCarthy: author of the very first English-language book on Japanese animation, the first English book on Hayao Miyazaki, and thirteen published works on the subject in total. Her fourteenth, The Manga Bible, drops March 24th. The woman does not stop.They work through three titles Mandy actually read: One Piece, which turns out to be a sneaky piece of social conditioning about building friendships when the world is terrifying (Eiichiro Oda knew exactly what he was doing); Nana, which delivers all the drama of Sex and the City set in 1999 Tokyo — a friendship story Mandy almost completely missed because she was reading it between DMV announcements; and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, which she found deeply upsetting, and means that as a compliment. Helen contextualizes all of it: the cartoony violence, the naïve heroines, the Indonesian protesters waving a One Piece flag, and why manga that looks contemporary might actually be set in your mother's girlhood. By the end, Mandy may not be a manga nerd. But the door is open — and she can see the plushies from here.Helen McCarthy is the author of the first English-language books on Japanese animation and on Hayao Miyazaki — which is to say, she was there taking manga seriously before the rest of the English-speaking world had even formed an opinion about it. She's consulted on doctoral theses, spoken at universities from Akita International to the University of Maryland, and built a career out of a manga collection that started with Spanish-language comics her partner found on a graduation trip to Mallorca. Her latest book, The Manga Bible — an accessible, people-first entry into the world of manga and the artists behind it — is out March 24th from Prestel. Find her at HelenMcCarthy.net.Referenced in This EpisodeOne Piece — manga and anime by Eiichiro Oda; live-action series on NetflixNana — manga by Ai YazawaNausicaä of the Valley of the Wind — manga and film by Hayao MiyazakiPast Episodes You Might LikeOne Piece with Zach LoganWatchmen with Adam RoseSuperman Smashes the Klan with Jimmy AquinoConnect 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.

    55 min
  3. Wonder Man: A Superhero Show About Not Being a Superhero

    16 MAR

    Wonder Man: A Superhero Show About Not Being a Superhero

    Wonder Man is, technically speaking, a Marvel show. It exists in the MCU. Captain America is out there somewhere. The Hulk is presumably smashing things. And none of that matters even a little bit, because this is a show about a guy who bombs auditions, self-sabotages every relationship he has, and quotes Pretty Woman during an improv because he's too afraid to access a genuine emotion. Simon Williams has a superpower, sure, but his actual problem is that he's every actor you've ever met who's three bad decisions away from selling real estate — which, by the way, Joey Pantoliano's character would enthusiastically recommend.Matthew Fox returns to the show and admits they’re the noob this time. Because while Matthew can navigate the MCU lore — explaining Trevor Slattery's bonkers journey from fake terrorist in Iron Man 3 to mystical land adventurer in Shang-Chi to reluctant government informant — it's Mandy who actually understands the world in which this show lives. The auditions that feel like psychological warfare. The directors who demand you "take risks" and then get furious when you do. The friends who call casting offices pretending to be your manager. All of it is painfully, hilariously real, and the show treats it with a respect that certain podcasts hosted by extremely famous actors have never managed.Matthew unpacks Wonder Man's superpower as a metaphor for passing — for anyone who's ever had to hide a fundamental part of themselves to get a job, keep a relationship, or just survive. It's the kind of reading that makes you realize why science fiction matters: not because the problems are unimaginable, but because they look exactly like the ones we can imagine. And if that doesn't get you, the show also features a black-and-white standalone episode about a guy called Damar the Doorman whose entire superpower is that people can walk through him, which is both the most absurd premise imaginable and a devastatingly accurate parable about how we consume and discard fame. Josh Gad plays himself as a monster. The episode description is literally just "Ding dong." It's perfect.By the finale, Simon hasn't become a hero in any traditional sense. He breaks his best friend out of jail — not to save the world, just because Trevor took the fall for him and that's what you do. It's personal and small and exactly right. Mandy and Matthew agree: this is a character study wearing a superhero costume it never actually puts on, and it's better for it.Links & NotesMatthew Fox's hub: TheEthicalPanda.comThe Marvel Movie Minute podcast (currently covering Captain America: Winter Soldier)Wonder Man on Disney+ If you like this episode ... The Goonies (featuring Mandy's Joey Pantoliano confession)Agatha All AlongCaptain AmericaThunderbolts (Make Me A Nerd)Thunderbolts (Superhero Ethics)Thunderbolts (The Film Board)The Penguin (with Matthew Fox)The Orville (with Matthew Fox)Last of Us (with Matthew Fox) Links & NotesFollow Mandy on Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensJoin the nerdy inner circle: makemeanerd.com/join --- 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
  4. We Need to Talk About The Traitors (And Also Michael Rapaport)

    9 MAR

    We Need to Talk About The Traitors (And Also Michael Rapaport)

    The Traitors is, at its core, a game you play at birthday parties when someone's kid really wants to be a detective. You sit in a circle. Some people are secret murderers. Everyone points fingers based on vibes alone. This should not be compelling television. And yet — here we are, with millions of people staying up past their bedtimes on a Tuesday because they cannot possibly let it get spoiled.Patrick Gomez, editor-in-chief of Entertainment Weekly and a man who has watched competitive reality television with the devotion most people reserve for religion, joins Mandy to explain exactly how a glorified sleepover game became appointment TV.They go deep on the Season 4 cast — a philosophical grab-bag of Olympic gold medalists, Real Housewives who showed up for the Scotland trip and got ambushed by actual gameplay, and Michael Rapaport, who sucked the air out of every room he entered and somehow made everyone root for his elimination regardless of their feelings about traitors. Patrick walks Mandy through the housewives-versus-gamers dynamic, the unspoken strategy the show deliberately buries to protect its own conceit, and why Rob may be playing the smartest game nobody's being allowed to fully see on screen.And because this is Make Me a Nerd, the conversation goes exactly where it should: the nerd appeal of obsessive post-episode strategy analysis, the surprising parallels to LARPing and Dungeons and Dragons, the UK version filmed in the same castle with completely different results, and why Kristen Kish — Top Chef host, professional chef, person trapped in a Scottish castle with catering — spent three weeks desperately trying to melt candy bar ingredients into something edible.Referenced EpisodesSurvivor with Patrick GomezCharmed with Patrick GomezThe Hunger Games with Mona ChatterjeeThe Great Pottery Throwdown with Jeremy Klavens Make Me a Nerd:Website: makemeanerd.com/joinInstagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensTikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.

    1 hr
  5. The Stardom Burrito: Bo Burnham, Comedy Nerds, and Chipotle Metaphors with Tommy Metz III

    2 MAR

    The Stardom Burrito: Bo Burnham, Comedy Nerds, and Chipotle Metaphors with Tommy Metz III

    There are two kinds of people in the world: people who cross their arms and dare a comedian to make them laugh, and people who show up already giggling before the lights go down. Mandy is firmly in the first camp, which makes it all the more remarkable that Bo Burnham's Make Happy got her — really got her — starting with the moment the man wakes up in full clown makeup and ending with a gut-punch silence that reframes the entire hour you just watched. Tommy Metz III, Mandy's most recurring guest, self-identified comedy nerd, and a man who has memorized entire comedy albums without meaning to, is here to explain why.The conversation covers an absurd amount of ground: the rise and fall of the eighties comedy boom (when every laundromat had a comedy club and every comedian got a sitcom deal they couldn't sustain past episode two), the alternative comedy movement that killed the piano-tie artifice, why Dane Cook was basically the MySpace version of Bo Burnham, and Tommy's deeply held conviction that musical comedy is like impressions — transcendent when it works, a hat on a much less impressive hat when it doesn't.At the heart of it is what Tommy catches on his latest rewatch that he'd never noticed before: the Chipotle joke isn't just a Chipotle joke. When Burnham circles back to "I wouldn't have asked for all that if you'd told me it would be such a mess," he's not talking about a burrito you guys — he's talking about fame, perfectionism, and the loneliness of building something extraordinary entirely by yourself.And then the special ends the way it has to: with silence, an empty room, and the quiet admission that people don't laugh when they're alone. They laugh in groups. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty good argument for listening to this episode with someone. Go ahead. Introduce Grandma to Burnham by way of this podcast. What could go wrong?People & References Mentioned:Bo Burnham — Make Happy (2016, Netflix), Inside (2021, Netflix), Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous (MTV)Christopher Storer — Co-director of Make Happy, creator/director of The BearStephen Lynch — Musical comedian, starred in The Wedding Singer on BroadwaySteve Martin — Comedian, actor, banjo enthusiastAnthony Jeselnik — ComedianConan O'Brien — Late night host, former Simpsons and SNL writerAndy Kindler — Comedian, comedy deconstructionistTodd Glass — ComedianDave Attell — Comedian's comedianJeff Ross — ComedianDane Cook — MySpace-era comedy disruptorNate Bargatze — ComedianFlight of the Conchords — Musical comedy duoTenacious D — Musical comedy duoMatt Friend — Impressionist, TikTokRick Glassman — Comedian, host of Take Your Shoes Off podcastFred Armisen — SNL cast member, Nicholas Fehn characterFiresign Theatre — 1960s/70s counterculture comedy troupeMr. Show with Bob and David, Kids in the Hall, The State — Sketch comedy showsBen Folds — "Rockin' the Suburbs"Zac Brown Band — "Chicken Fried"Mortified — Live show and podcast where people read their childhood diariesGeorge Carlin — "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" Tommy Metz III's Shows:All the Feelings Presents: Still Adulting (with Pete Wright) — allthefeelings.funSitting in the Dark — Horror movie monthly podcastThe Film Board Make Me a Nerd:Website: makemeanerd.com/joinInstagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensTikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast --- 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
  6. Where's the Food? The Hunger Games Book-to-Movie Breakdown with Mona Chatterjee

    23 FEB

    Where's the Food? The Hunger Games Book-to-Movie Breakdown with Mona Chatterjee

    Here's the thing about watching a movie one week after reading the book it's based on: you become the world's most insufferable viewing companion. And Mandy—who consumed Suzanne Collins's novel and then immediately sat down for the 2012 film like some kind of dystopian speed-run—has NOTES. Guest Mona Chatterjee is back for what is officially Make Me A Nerd's first-ever adaptation episode, and together they discover that reading the book first is both a gift and a curse, because now you know exactly what's missing and you will not shut up about it.What's missing, weirdly, is food. In a story literally called The Hunger Games, the movie manages to skip almost every meal, every hunt, every lovingly described roast beef with peas and bread and butter. Mandy invokes Andy Cohen's legendary insistence that Real Housewives viewers need to hear what everyone ordered at dinner, which is either the most unhinged comparison in podcast history or the most correct one.Beyond the missing meals, they devour the film's genuinely brilliant visual choices—the bleached-out gray of District 12 versus the candy-colored absurdity of Panem's Capitol residents (who look less Marie Antoinette and more "Andy Warhol meets Pablo Picasso"), the Apollo 11-style control room that gave Mandy exactly the behind-the-scenes Capitol view she begged for during the book episode, and Jennifer Lawrence's performance, which makes you forget you already know the ending.They snack through casting what-ifs (Kristin Chenoweth as Effie would have been INCREDIBLE, John C. Reilly as Haymitch would have been a disaster), why Lenny Kravitz as Cinna was "too mellow and sexy" for a character they both pictured as a fierce little costume gremlin, and the eternal mystery of why Hollywood cast four interchangeable pasty white guys as the male tributes and expected audiences to tell them apart during fight scenes. The answer, as always, is that maybe they all shouldn't have been white.Make Me a Nerd:Website: makemeanerd.com/joinInstagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensTikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast --- 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
  7. May the Odds Ever Smell of Sweat: A Hunger Games Deep Dive with Mona Chatterjee • The Novel

    16 FEB

    May the Odds Ever Smell of Sweat: A Hunger Games Deep Dive with Mona Chatterjee • The Novel

    Yes, I know—it's 2026, Hunger Games came out almost two decades ago, and we've all moved on now to whatever fresh dystopian nightmare is currently trending. But here's the thing: Suzanne Collins' story about state-sponsored child murder dressed up as entertainment has only gotten MORE relevant, and that should terrify us all.Mandy welcomes back Mona Chatterjee (Miscast alum, Billboard chart artist, international beauty brand impresario) to explore why a book that opens with "the day of the reaping" manages to hook readers from age 12 to 52, and why its themes of inequality, complicity, and manufactured spectacle feel less like fiction and more like tomorrow's damned news.The conversation goes deep fast. Both Mandy and Mona fixate on the people we DON'T see enough of—the peacekeepers who beat kids into submission then go home to dinner, the styling team who beautify tributes before sending them to die, Haymitch drinking himself unconscious because he relives his trauma every single year.Mandy pitches "Below Deck: Panem Edition" to explore how normal people participate in monstrous systems, and honestly? That's the Hannah Arendt question applied to YA literature, and it's exactly what makes this book endure. They also tackle Katniss's backwards trust issues (she trusts Rue immediately but not Peeta, who literally saved her life), the Kaplan Curse (of course Prim's name would be drawn when it's only in there once), and Mandy's recurring obsessions: Why doesn't anyone mention how everything smells?As Mona says, the Capitol's greatest fear isn't violence—it's hope. Hope is what sparks rebellion. Hope is what makes people believe things could be different. Collins wrote this in 2008, drawing on her father's Vietnam experiences and her concerns about reality TV desensitization. Every year since, it's become more prescient, more uncomfortably close to our actual world. So yes, we're still talking about The Hunger Games—because we're still living in the world that made it necessary.Make Me a Nerd:Website: makemeanerd.com/joinInstagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensTikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast --- Learn more about supporting this podcast by becoming a member. It's just $5/month or $55/year. Visit our website to learn more.

    51 min
  8. It’s Our Time Down Here: A Goonies Comfort Rewatch with Krissy Lenz

    9 FEB

    It’s Our Time Down Here: A Goonies Comfort Rewatch with Krissy Lenz

    This week on Make Me a Nerd, Mandy Kaplan does the bravest thing a grown adult can do: she prescribes herself a medically unnecessary, emotionally essential dose of The Goonies—because sometimes “self-care” is a bubble bath, and sometimes it’s screaming “HEY YOU GUYS” into the void until the void screams back. Joined by recurring fan-favorite guest Krissy Lenz (of The Most Excellent 80s Movies), Mandy revisits Richard Donner’s chaotic, sweet, frequently-overlapping-yelling masterpiece and marvels at how it manages to be simultaneously a kids’ adventure film and a movie that opens with a fake suicide and drops the S-word roughly nineteen times like it’s being paid per syllable.They dig into why the character introductions during the opening chase are basically a clinic in “how to meet an ensemble cast fast,” why Brand deserves a modern reappraisal as the patron saint of big-brother competence, and why pirates apparently had both scurvy and an interior designer on payroll. Along the way, the conversation detours into Corey Feldman lore (including the surreal fact of Corey Feldman calling Krissy directly because he couldn’t get into the recording app), the weirdly persistent “octopus scene” ghost that’s referenced even when cut, and the uncomfortable 80s habit of using fat-shaming as a punchline so routinely you can practically hear a studio executive chanting, “Yes, yes, keep punching down, it’s working.”And because Mandy’s brain is both tender and mischievous, we also get: a brief masterclass in “planning crimes vs committing crimes” (involving a pizza smuggled into a movie theater), a quick Make Me a Nerd sidebar into the threat of scurvy in modern adulthood, and a round of Goonies trivia that ends exactly the way it should: with friendship intact and pride mildly wounded.Make Me a Nerd:Website: makemeanerd.com/joinInstagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavensTikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast --- 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
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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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