Dispatch Ajax! Podcast

For the conclusion to our annual Halloween series we lean into a modern dread and treat it like a horror creature: the Screen Zombie, a modern twist on the undead where the “bite” is a signal, a feed, a notification loop, or a broadcast that strips away empathy and agency until people move like automatons.

We start with a philosophical gut-check from Descartes: how would you spot a mind versus a machine? Then we drag that question into 2026 reality, where smartphones, social media algorithms, bot-filled platforms, and always-on content can hollow out connection. We talk about the civi...

This week we continue our Halloween celebration with a Horror legend! Wes Craven’s name gets tossed around in the background, but we wanted to actually put him in perspective. We stack him up against the heaviest hitters, argue through the horror director Mount Rushmore debate, and explain why Craven isn’t just a legend, he’s a repeat offender at reinventing the slasher genre.

We walk from the brutal early impact of The Last House on the Left to the scorched, survivalist nightmare of The Hills Have Eyes, then pull the thread that ties so much of his...

We’re in Spooktober mode, and we’re planting our flag. For our continuing October Halloween exploration we bring you an often overlooked Horror movie series: Warlock. It's one of those franchises we keep waiting for people to rediscover, because the first film has everything genre fans claim they want: a confident supernatural villain, strange old-world witchcraft rules, and a time-travel chase that never stops pushing forward. Julian Sands brings a “posh evil” presence that feels genuinely dangerous, sexy, and unpredictable, the kind of performance that should have made him a bigger horror household name.

We dig into wha...

In this classic Halloween episode we look back upon a near-forgotten Horror anthology TV series - Tales from the Darkside. We trace how Creepshow and the EC Comics tradition (Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror) set the blueprint, then get into the messy rights reality that forced Romero’s team to build something adjacent rather than literal. From there, we spotlight the October 1983 premiere “Trick or Treat,” a nasty little morality play about debt, greed, and a Halloween-night reckoning that feels like the purest form of anthology justice.

Then we jump into one of the most fun co...

In a scattered discussion, we break down the cult vampire film Sundown: The Vampire in Retreat. We talk through the movie’s best hook: a hidden vampire community that’s trying to go legit with sunscreen, public-facing small-town life, and a factory producing a synthetic blood substitute so vampires can stop feeding on humans. From there, the story splinters into factions and a quiet coup against David Carradine’s Mardulak, a human family dragged into vampire politics, and a rival vampire’s nasty, sexually charged scheme that drives the ugliest tension in the plot. Along the way, we call out the...

Star Trek turns 60 and somehow the big story is this: the pipeline is drying up, the creative direction feels scattered, and the one show still on the air is starting to lose us. We talk through Strange New Worlds season four and why the constant genre tribute approach starts to feel like “holodeck episodes all season” with none of the payoff. When every week becomes a parody or a pastiche, the ship stops feeling real, character choices stop carrying weight, and we catch ourselves checking out instead of leaning in.

We also get specific about what works and...

In the classic monologue we go into some of the details we didin't get to in our previous NüTrek breakdowns. We jump back into the debate around Star Trek: Discovery and the bigger question behind every prequel choice, where does “updating the franchise” end and where does breaking continuity begin? When a show introduces capabilities that feel too advanced for its place on the timeline, it does not just create trivia errors, it can erase the exact constraints that later episodes rely on for tension, mystery, and character problem-solving.

We dig into a deceptively small detail with...

In another installment of our series celebrating Star Trek's 60th anniversary we bring you a classic episode breaking down the fanchises' 4th wave. We spend real time on the infamous spore drive, the way instant travel wrecks stakes, and how Discovery ends up writing itself into a corner that later Trek has to tiptoe around. From there we jump to the Dilithium Burn and the far-future setting, asking basic worldbuilding questions the show never answers cleanly, like how the Romulans fit into a galaxy where dilithium suddenly becomes the only thing that matters. Along the way, we talk lost...

In our ongoing celebration of Star Trek's 60th anniversary we revisit our commentary on Trek's 4th wave (as of last year). We dig into the real-world mechanics behind the J.J. Abrams era: studio splits, blockbuster incentives, and the creative team that helped steer the franchise toward speed, spectacle, and recognizable references. Then we get specific. We break down Star Trek 2009’s strongest moves and its most telling shortcuts, from technobabble that stops meaning anything to plot coincidences that feel like the script is shoving characters into place. Along the way, we unpack Romulan and Vulcan history, the Hobus su...

To celebrate Star Trek's 60th Anniversary we thought we'd present a series of both old and new episodes that cover a wide swath of Trek topics. First up, an early show we did about the economics of the universe and how commerce works when you don't have money. 

'Ever wonder how the economy of Star Trek works?  Well, we'll break down the complicated concept of Future Money (or the lack there-of) in sci-fi's most enduring legacy franchise.  This will be the first in a reoccurring series of Trek Talks on this topic and many others for your lis...

Comic shops can feel welcoming and hostile at the same time, mostly because the language is a maze. We break that maze into simple, usable terms so you can walk in knowing what to ask for, what you’re looking at on the shelves, and how to avoid the classic awkward moments at the counter.

Walking into a comic book store shouldn’t feel like you need a password, but the jargon can make it that way fast. We’ve both worked behind the counter, so we’re translating the terms that confuse new readers and frustrate casual shoppers, without the gatekeeping. If you’ve ever wondered what a floppy is, why new issues drop on Wednesdays, or why someone side-eyes the phrase “graphic novel,” we’ve got you.

In a classic and timely episode on Artificial Intellegence we wrestle with the personhood problem. If a replicant can feel fear, build memories, form attachments, and fight to live, what exactly makes them “less than” besides a corporate definition, a programmed lifespan, or a society that needs someone to do the jobs humans don’t want? That question echoes into the real world, where legal systems and public stunts can gesture at “rights” without resolving the deeper ethical mess.

In a classic - yet timely - episode we continue digging in to what we call Artificial Intellegence these days and what it's been throughout pop culture. We sort through the terms people blur together, like consciousness, sentience, and self-awareness, and lay out common indicators researchers look for, from internal world models to self-monitoring. 

An animal companion isn’t just cute, loyal, or marketable. The best ones force a moral choice, expose a character’s blind spot, or act like nature’s voice when humans get too comfortable with their own excuses. We dig into why animal companions in fantasy and science fiction keep landing so hard, and why the trope feels bigger than a sidekick.

While we're deal with some crazy life stuff we thought we'd revisit a rapidly changing topic in Artificial Intelligence. We walk through the foundations that make AI feel inevitable: formal reasoning, the Church Turing thesis, early neural network ideas, and the Turing test as our most famous shortcut for judging “intelligence.” Along the way, we hit the hype cycles and turning points, from early chess machines and the coining of the word robot to research booms, AI winter, and the moment responsive machines become normal in American homes. 

Why do pets and animal companions in fiction feel so immediate, so universally legible, and so devastating when a story takes them away?

We pull threads from everywhere, comic book pets like Krypto, the daemon companions of His Dark Materials, and the long mythic history of loyal animals that reveal a hero’s character. From Odysseus and Argus to the Mahabharata’s stray dog test, we track what separates a true companion from a symbol or a beast of burden: mutual attachment, choice, and the kind of love that costs something.

Bigfoot in space, Krampus as a demonic Christmas weapon, a clone of Alistair Crowley, reptilian Stalin, Satan pulling strings, and a title card that promises a fight that may never happen. That’s not a mad lib we wrote, it’s the kind of chaos you can trip over on Tubi when the autoplay algorithm decides you’re ready for BC Fourteen.

We go beyond the handle, the pseudonyms, the surprisingly normal “working creator” backstory, and the pivot from horror shorts and writing into kid-friendly projects and then adult animated “versus” movies. From there, we unpack the most unhinged...

* Redownload if necessary*

Greetings, fellow traveller. For our Sci-Fi Channel series finale we bring you Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a short-lived but brilliant British parody show that never really got its due. 

(Sorry we were a little late on this episode, but Jake and I both had some pretty serious life stuff happen. Trying to get back on track.)

We break down what makes the mockumentary format work so well, from the talking-head commentary to the show-within-a-show mechanics that let the creators land jokes at multiple levels at once. Along the way, we talk a...

Max Headroom - a glitchy cyberpunk face that seemed like a novelty in the 1980s - somehow became a pop culture anchor through commercials, parodies, and wall-to-wall brand exposure. If you mostly remember New Coke or a weird talking head you saw on TV, you’re not alone and that’s part of the story.

We step away from our sci-fi channel mini-series for Pride Month to give slash fiction the spotlight it deserves, because it is not just “spicy fanfic.” It is a long-running tradition of readers and viewers naming queer subtext, building community around it, and creating stories where mainstream media stays silent.

In a break from our mini-series we’re taking a hard look at why UFO disclosure and UAP transparency keep feeling “right around the corner” while delivering almost nothing on which people can agree. Along the way we touch the viral political chatter, the shifting tone from outright denial to careful acknowledgment, and the way the internet turns every half-statement into proof of a hidden program.

In one of the last episodes of the series we take a hard look at Voyagers!, the 1982 time travel series that barrels from setup to action in seconds. If you’ve ever loved Quantum Leap, Doctor Who, Back to the Future style causality, or TVA style “sacred timeline” drama, this one is a missing link worth revisiting.

We’re continuing our Sci-Fi Channel origin series by digging into LEXX: a cult space opera about a cowardly non-hero, an undead assassin, a love-obsessed robot head, and a former love slave flying a living ship built to destroy planets. It’s silly, dark, occasionally bad, sometimes brilliant, and almost never safe.

 In our ongoing series we’re tracing Jerry Anderson’s strange, essential legacy and why early Sci Fi Channel programming kept looping Supercar, Stingray, and Space: 1999 into the brains of American kids who had no idea what they were watching, only that it felt like a secret door into another era of science fiction TV.

This is a preview of our ongoing series on the origins and programming of the Sci-Fi Channel. I promise we do actually talk about Gerry Anderson in this one. 

William Shatner's TekWar is a so-so cyberpunk cop story that somehow grew into novels, comics, trading cards, syndicated TV movies, a USA Network and Sci Fi Channel series, and a PC video game that many people still call one of the worst ever made. The real story is not the plot, it’s the momentum. We follow the money, the branding, and the era’s obsession with recognizable names to figure out how this franchise kept getting revived even as it struggled to become genuinely good.

A superhero team that rides in an ice cream truck?  Courtney Cox?? The Predator??? sounds like a joke until you actually watch it. We go deep on Misfits of Science, the short-lived 1985 NBC sci-fi superhero series that later found a second life on early Sci-Fi Channel lineups and then quietly vanished, shrouded in tragedy.

Gul Dukat ruled Terok Nor with an iron fist, measuring Bajorans like inventory even as the occupation began to crack under resistance and political pressure. We unpack how fear of assassination, obsession with control, and a need to be admired can fuse into something far more dangerous than simple rage.

We start with the big thesis: the Sci-Fi Channel is an early masterclass in niche marketing, built on the belief that sci-fi fans are loyal and underserved. From there we dig into the credibility play of bringing in Gene Roddenberry and Isaac Asimov, and how the network’s direction shifts once the people with real “skin in the game” are gone. We also revisit the weirdest, most charming early experiments like Faster-Than-Light Newsfeed, the idea that the network itself has a story, and the scrappy reality of filling a schedule with syndicated classics before the bigger deals arrive.

In our classic third installment of the Highlander franchise (because of the reported first footage of the remake premiering) we really have a blast talking about all the other fun stuff we'd been waiting to cover. 

Believe it or not, Highlander is supposed to be simple: immortals fight, heads come off, lightning happens. Then the sequels show up and the canon turns into a sword fight with itself. We pick apart why Highlander 2 and Highlander 3 feel like they were written in a different universe, and why the Highlander TV series quietly becomes the place where the franchise f...

This is part 2 of our revisitation of the Highlander franchise - since the official footage of the Highlander reboot recently debuted at CinemaCon.

The Highlander remake is officially moving from rumor to reality, which means it’s time to revisit the series on one of our earliest explainers. We go deep on the franchise’s core mythology of immortals who can’t die unless they’re beheaded, who are pulled toward the Gathering, and who chase the mysterious Prize even when the canon can’t decide what the Prize really is. If you’ve ever argued about continuity, retcons, or “how does that even work,” you’re in the right place.

We're Back! And with that we start a new mini series about The Sci-Fi Channel (SyFy, if ya nasty) and its wild diaspora. 

Something strange happened on old-school satellite TV: a channel appeared out of nowhere, looping wormholes and bright “screensaver” tunnels with no station ID, no ads, and no explanation. Then it teased an invasion and started a countdown clock. That mystery wasn’t pirate radio, it was the marketing fuse that lit the Sci-Fi Channel’s 1992 launch, and we can still feel the ripple effects today.

Rumors of our death have been greatly exaggerated! We're still going, just having some hiccups, kinda like the rest of the world.  

We open the door to the underexplained corners of Nerd and Geek culture—where a driveway TARDIS keeps you warm at the bus stop, Flash Gordon becomes a friendship hinge, and debates about whether Star Wars is science fiction or fantasy spark better ways to watch everything else.

This is a brief note from Podfest in Orlando earlier this year. 

We celebrate our 159th with - among many Geeky things - a fast, funny tour of Star Trek’s dangling threads, from Tasha Yar’s exit to the lost “Conspiracy” arc, plus DS9’s long-game brilliance and Voyager’s resets. We field listener questions on Avengers, The Question, X-Men deep cuts, and stage a Borg Cube vs Death Star face-off. Plus, Data and the Force?

...It's Erich Von Däniken. In the 1960's a Swiss hotelier wrote a book that changed how millions see the past—and how pop culture tells stories about it. We revisit the wild trajectory of Chariots of the Gods, the “ancient aliens” hypothesis it popularized, and the uncomfortable roots that made its rise possible. Then we pull the camera back: how the Space Age, New Age mysticism, and a collapsing trust in old narratives set the stage for infotainment, speculative nonfiction, and a meme that just won’t die.

RIP Gil Gerard. A New York cab, a day job in drama class, and a shot at the 25th century: that’s the unlikely runway that launched Gil Gerard into Buck Rogers, and it still glows with neon charm. We open the vault on Gerard’s early grind through commercials, soaps, and 70s disaster flicks, then follow the thread back to Buck’s pulp origins in newspapers, radio waves, and the 1939 serials that taught America to love ray guns, zeppelins, and cliffhangers. It’s a fast, affectionate tour of the DNA that links John Carter’s planetary romance, Flash Gordon’s s...

536 CE: What happens when the sun dims for eighteen months and summer never really arrives? The volcanic winter that blanketed much of the world in a cold, bluish haze, and the chain reaction it set off—failed harvests, famine, migrations, plagues, and the quiet rewiring of global power. Drawing on eyewitness chronicles and modern climate forensics like ice-core sulfate spikes and tree-ring anomalies, we piece together how a cluster of eruptions chilled the planet and turned a bad year into one of the harshest periods to be alive.