[This review reveals major plot points for Way Of X #1.]

Maybe it’s just where we find ourselves in this stage of late-stage capitalism, but this farcical narrative fiction podcast about a post-Purge murder-for-hire company just hits. Hit Job, Audible’s new 12-part scripted series, imagines a world where acts of homicide, just like everything else, can be outsourced for a…

As Ready Player One’s Ernest Cline is to outdated pop culture references, Andy Weir is to the science of space. The author of The Martian shares the same guileless enthusiasm for the intricacies of his obsession, the same willingness to sacrifice all other elements of a novel—pacing, structure, characterization—on the…

This week’s entry: The Mad Pooper

For decades, Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters was a comic-book urban legend. Originally pitched in 1984 as an Incredible Hulk one-shot exploring Bruce Banner’s abusive childhood, the story was shelved because of the word “goddamn” and then later repurposed during Bill Mantlo’s run on the series, infuriating Windsor-Smith…

Quinta Brunson is what marketing consultants might call a “digital native.” Her breakthrough in comedy came with an Instagram series, “The Girl Who’s Never Been On A Nice Date,” and making videos for BuzzFeed was one of several ways—alongside writing, acting, and performing stand-up—that this Philadelphia native built…

I have a quick question about bisexuality. What if one has a preference for dating straight individuals? As a straight woman, I am only interested in dating straight men. Is that some kind of phobia? Or is it okay for that to be a preference? I’ve always wanted to ask someone this but I’m afraid of being thought of as…

Cue the Phantom Planet song “California” because Rachel Bilson and Melinda Clarke are really taking The O.C. fans “right back where we started from.” The two actors launched their brand new podcast, Welcome To The O.C., Bitches on Tuesday, April 27 by taking us behind-the-scenes of the iconic teen drama’s very first…

You’d think that once someone committed to embodying an archetype of forbidden and mysterious power, they’d relax a little about the whole “black magic” thing. But anxiety about practicing the “wrong” kind of witchcraft permeates occult literature; Of Blood And Bones, a book about using taboo materials like—well,…

Past Gas is an automotive history podcast whose gearhead hosts cover everything from highflying daredevils to the political origins of lowrider car culture. In this episode, the team is absolutely baffled as to why the subject they’re covering hasn’t already been turned into an Oscar-winning motion picture. In the…

This week’s entry: Old Hoss Radbourn

Beatnik Buenos Aires is a curious book, essentially a supplementary text to a Spanish-language documentary about 1960s Argentinean artists that is not readily available in English. And as inaccessible to a strictly Anglophone audience as the documentary can be, so, too, is some of the work of those same artists…

There are westerns where the protagonist never breaks a sweat, has to make a bad choice, or fails to save the day. Then, there are westerns where the protagonist is just as down on their luck as anyone else in the world. Witchblood is the second kind, albeit with a supernatural bent: The first issue follows the story…

I’m a cis bi guy in my 40s who doesn’t have a lot of experience with other men. I’m happily married to a wonderful woman who knows I’m bi, and while we’re presently monogamous, we’ve talked about opening things up in the future. If that happens, I’d like to casually hook up with a guy once in a while, but I’m a little…

In every medium there are giants that stand head and shoulders above everyone else, names it’s nearly impossible to avoid and legacies that continue to build with each new generation of creators. MPLS Sound is a book that’s sort of about one of those giants, but it’s more about the legacy he left behind, the scene he…

The U.K. government and media would brand the violence that started on April 10, 1981 in the South London suburb of Brixton a riot, but to the Afro-Caribbean community that called Brixton home, it was an uprising. Brixton: Flames On The Front Line is a new BBC series that charts the events of the uprising that saw…

“Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.” Wandering the aisles of the pan-Asian grocery store, Michelle Zauner sees the specter of her mother. She cries when she can’t remember which seaweed brand her family used to buy, and she cries seeing a Korean grandmother in the food court, picturing how her mother would’ve…

Actor, comedian, and Bitch Sesh podcaster Casey Wilson has added another title to her repertoire: author. The Happy Endings star has written a collection of personal essays titled The Wreckage Of My Presence: Essays, which is out May 4 via HarperCollins. In it, Wilson writes about her relationships, including…

We explore some of Wikipedia’s oddities in our 6,284,187-week series, Wiki Wormhole.