NerdAF ƒ/4.20 FILMS

Fair warning: spoilers and Star Wars deep-dives ahead. With The Rise of Skywalker, The Mandalorian and everything else coming out of that favorite galaxy far, far away, the NerdAF Show is bringing back Star Wars expert Andrew Matranga, who literally teaches a class about Star Wars at the University of Denver. You've heard him on our mics before but this time he takes a deep dive with hosts Tyler Scott, Richard Williams and Hugh Johnson to talk about how it's a good time to be a Star Wars fan. And yes, Baby Yoda gets the deserved attention. Find him at studyingstarwars.com and on Twitter.com/andrewmatranga.

Martin Scorsese might be on the record disliking superhero-genre movies but our hosts dig into why canon films like Joker are trying hard to prove him wrong. Hosts Hugh Johnson, Richard Williams and Tyler Scott tackle that superhero-movie fatigue, Joker, Disney+ and more, and Tyler takes us to church on Blizzard and how to look past our hobbies amid the game developer's Hong Kong controversy. With this, our Season 4 kickoff episode, we're now coming to your ears via the Anchor podcasting platform, too. Learn more and consider supporting NerdAF at https://anchor.fm/nerdafpodcast

Things start off a little goofy this week but we’ll lead off with a big explicit SPOILER ALERT, to be clear. Our intrepid hosts get serious about Amazon’s “The Boys” and even more so about Walmart’s response to recent gun violence (by pulling in-store advertisements for violent video games). Producer Andy even takes the mic to weigh in, and not just with puns.

The NerdAF team sends its condolences upon the death of film icon Rutger Hauer, who passed July 19. And on the heels of the famed San Diego Comicon, our hosts really want it to be rebranded this year as more like Marvel-con, and they’ll tell you why. We follow up our last chat about Neil Gaiman, too, as well as what’s next for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

This week's NerdAF show finds our hosts reacting to the latest Spider-Man flick, leaving them asking "Haven't we seen this movie before?" Also on tap: a tip of the hat to show host Richard Williams for the anti-bigotry op-ed piece published in The Colorado Sun, cowritten with former NerdAF producer Vincent Chandler; plus a fond farewell to Microsoft's soon-to-be-killed ebook platform; and a new segment about what our hosts are currently nerding out on, which we're calling "If that's what you're into."

NerdAF has emerged on the other side of the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3 for short, and our hosts have THOUGHTS. Listen to hosts Hugh Johnson, Richard Williams and Tyler Scott as they unpack E3, then pause in grief to mark Swamp Thing's cancellation before a more festive occasion: a two-ticket giveaway to the June 22 album release by our friends, The Trujillo Co.