Nerd Hurdles
By Simply Syndicated
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Podcast Description
Nerd Hurdles is a podcast. Chances are if you’re here, you know that already. But just in case you got sent here by Google or a link sent to you by someone in your office, Nerd Hurdles is a podcast about things nerds like. Things that regular people (”normals”) scoff at or outright shun. We discuss these things in a generally humorous and vaguely intelligent way. Or is that intelligible? It might be neither intelligent nor intelligible. Jakob and Mandi discuss all manner and forms of nerdery and geekery and what makes them magnificent and tragic. This weekly epic explored the depths of what fandoms mean to their fans. Sacred cows of the scifi, fantasy, comic book and any other genre that makes the general public squirm with discomfort get the irreverent Nerd Hurdles treatment (and nerdy love).
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1 |
NH 138 – 2012 Oscar Noms | (http://www.simplysyndicated.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/138-640.jpg) Nathan is back to help us talk about the 2012 Academy Awards Nominations. We go through the noms in the Best Picture category and make our predictions about who will take home the Oscar on February 26th. The Nominees: The Artist; The Descendants; Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close; The Help; Hugo; Midnight in Paris; Moneyball; The Tree of Life; War Horse. | 3 2 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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2 |
NH 137 – Underworld: Awakening | (http://www.simplysyndicated.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/137-640.jpg) Nerd Hurdles returns to the Underworld. It triggers an argument about body image. | 25 1 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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3 |
NH 136 – Foodie Hurdles | (http://www.simplysyndicated.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/136-640.jpg) Jakob and Mandi talk food, foodies, cooking classes and cheeses of the world. Anyone up for some balut (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(egg))? | 13 1 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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4 |
NH 135 – Vacation Viewing 2 | (http://www.simplysyndicated.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/135-6401.jpg) We went on vacation again and this is what we thought about the things we watched (pretty much spoiler free!). | 6 1 12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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5 |
NH 134 – Trilogies (3rd Birthday unSpecial) | (http://www.simplysyndicated.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/134-640.jpg) Like all good things that come in threes, Nerd Hurdles celebrates its 3rd birthday on December the 18th, 2011. Fittingly, or a reasonable facsimile of fittingly, they talk about the great trilogies of our time (somehow omitting the Beethoven movies). | 14 12 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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6 |
NH 133 – The Muppets | (http://www.simplysyndicated.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/NH133-640.jpg) To celebrate the brilliant new The Muppets movie, we return to this subject to give it a more in depth analysis than in our puppetry episode (yeah right). | 29 11 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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7 |
NH 132 – Television Talent Contests | (http://www.simplysyndicated.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/132-640.jpg) This week Jakob and Mandi return to the world of reality TV—specifically the talent contest shows— and use it as a frame for tangents. They also talk about drunk Paula and confuse X-Factor with various countries that Got Talent. | 22 11 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 131 – Dollhouse | (http://www.simplysyndicated.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/NH131-640.jpg) After a brief, unplanned hiatus, we're back with an episode of proportions. Not epic proportions, but human proportions where we wax poetic about the weird anatomy of people far more beautiful than us. We also manage to talk about the oft-maligned, under-rated, misunderstood, yet somewhat problematic, Joss Whedon TV series Dollhouse. | 8 11 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 130 – Going To The Library | (http://www.simplysyndicated.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/130-6401.jpg) Jakob and Mandi are joined by their soft-spoken librarian friend Stephen about the most hallowed of all nerd haunts, the public library. Together they comb the stacks in search of the fiction, non-fiction and history behind the stigmas and stereotypes of the institution, its employees and its patrons. Links: We would have written about famous librarians in pop culture but a blog called The Despectacled Librarian has already done more research on the subject than we care to. Librarians in song (http://despectacledlibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/07/04/librarians-in-song-and-you-thought-i-was-done/) Librarians on TV (http://despectacledlibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/07/03/ah-yes-we-mustnt-forget-about-librarians-on-t-v/) Librarians in movies (http://despectacledlibrarian.wordpress.com/2010/07/01/movies-my-favourite-subject-lets-include-librarians/) Libreas Podcast (as in Library Ideas... see what they done there?). Interestingly the name is a pun in English but the podcast is actually in German. | 12 10 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 129 – Going To The Zoo | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/129-640.jpg) One of the few horribly over-crowded places you can say, "It's a zoo in here!" and mean it literally. Never mind the penned-up animals, the real exhibits are the people. | 21 9 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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11 |
NH 128 – Geek Girls (with Ro Karen and her Beloved) | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/128-640.jpg) When we sat down to chat about nerdy girls with Ro Karen of Starbase 66, her infamous Beloved claimed she wasn't going to say a single word. So we didn't give her a microphone. That didn't stop her. At all. Welcome to The Beloved Show. | 14 9 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 127 – Crime & Punishment | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/127-640.jpg) Police dramas and legal dramas have been a staple of television programming since television was called radio. This week Jakob and Mandi investigate and prosecute infamous television cops and lawyers. Murder One and Law & Order are named in the indictment but, as with any police dragnet, many key suspects elude capture. Let us know who we missed on the forums. | 8 9 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 126 – What’s Cookin’? | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/126-640.jpg) We all need to eat. Which means some of us need to cook. So, how do you cook? It can be an unexpectedly difficult set of skills to master considering how basic they are to our survival. Luckily, since the dawn of time—well, since people discovered fire and consequently bar-be-que—there have been those willing to pass on these skills to others. With the advent of television, the sum total of our culture's culinary knowledge was places at out fingertips. So why aren't we all master chefs? Besides the fact that we all learn at some point that following along with a cooking show results in gastronomic disaster, human beings don't like to learn so much as pretend they're learning. We prefer to better ourselves through osmosis as opposed to practical, hands on experience. Very few people who watched the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross have ever painted a single happy tree. The same can be said for anyone who ever attended classes in university. Observing this, the producers of cooking shows have steered away from straight instructional demonstration to focus on personality, between steps banter and chef competitions. Some shows aren't about cooking but food appreciation where the preparation of the meal is, at best, a footnote (such as BBC's The Supersizers). Now, with the democratizing effect of the internet, people who don't even know how to cook have cooking shows. Such as the delightfully messy My Drunk Kitchen with Hannah Hart. Proof that it's harder than it might seem to make a simple little (enjoyable to watch) YouTube cooking show: Our Pagan Kitchen. Real cooking shows: The Supersizers; My Drunk Kitchen; Cookus Inrreuptus; Vegan Black Metal Chef, Hail Seitan; Martha Stewart Bloopers; Wok With Yan; Urban Peasant. | 1 9 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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14 |
NH 125 – The End Of All Things Buffy (Angel Finale) | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/NH125-640.jpg) Yes, there are spoilers in this episode. For both Angel and Buffy. But if you haven't watched them yet, you probably have no interest in watching them. So you may as well listen to some spoilers. If, after listening to the spoilers, you think it all sounds pretty good. You should follow this guide (http://www.squidoo.com/buffy_angel_viewing_guide) for watching Buffy and Angel in conjunction. And don't forget about the Toronto Meet-up! | 25 8 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 124 – Going To The Movies | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/NH124-640.jpg) What's more awesome than going to the movies? Free ride on a space shuttle? A room full of gold bars? A root canal? It's always a crap-shoot. Who will ruin your movie-going experien... | 11 8 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 123 – PEANUTS, Featuring Good Ol’ Charlie Brown | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/NH123-640.jpg) For a comic strip so overwhelmingly popular (over the course of 50 years it became a $1 billion empire), it's relatively rare to find someone who will admit to enjoying Peanuts, much less... | 5 8 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 122 – Summer Bummers | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/nh122-640.jpg) Summer is a terrible time of year. According to Jakob. Links: Ogopogo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogopogo). | 28 7 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 121 – HP7DHPt2 (Accio Spoilers) | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/nh121-640hpdh2.jpg) We've given you a full week to see the film and something like four years to read the book, so we're not even going to bother warning you this episode/blog post contains spoilers. Your puny Petronus is no match for our Avada Spoilavra anyway. A decade of Harry Potter comes to a close with HP7DHPt2. Which is the second half of the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and not a new virulent strain of the flu. Yet, like a malaise, this cinematic end is causing acute sadness in some people. It's the end of a magical era. There will no longer be another installment to look forward to; No annual booster shot of enchantment to revive the spell cast by the books that were such a profound experience for so many. In others there's merely this vague sense of relief or, if that's putting it too strongly, a sense of finality somewhat similar to putting a cherished pet to sleep after a long and fulfilled life. But a pet you were never really that fond of. What's playing next? Richard Smith, of the Movies You Should See Podcast, wrote this blog post on opening weekend. In it he's summed up most of what's wrong with both Deathly Hallows films. Mainly that the pacing is messed up entirely. Things that should have had time spent on them are rushed and unimportant events are given long, atmospheric sequences. At one point I came back from the washroom and Mandi told me, "You missed Voldemort walking across the bridge." David Yates is certainly adept at conjuring up the proper atmosphere for Harry Potter. But but he's a squib at telling the story. Too many small, but very important, details were cut seemingly for the sake of freeing up the time needed for atmospheric bridge walking. It wasn't until the polyjuice potion wore off that I realized the bearded guy in the bank heist was Ron. Perhaps process of elimination should have clued me in but I was too busy trying to actually be immersed in the movie to do some critical thinking. Those who know the book by heart (many in the audience probably) wouldn't have this problem. But I've only read the book once and that was over a year ago. There should have been a five second shot of Ron transforming. Besides it's always cool to watch wizards doing some magic. In a movie about wizards doing magic. Though there were far too many small cuts of this nature, one thing I do disagree with Rich about is that the whole book couldn't have been done in one film because the cuts would've been even worse. It's not the cuts that are the problem, it's the slapdash way they were handled. If the proper amount of time had been given to each scene, the book could have been wrapped-up in three hours without jettisoning anything important. At least, it couldn't really be any worse than it is and we wouldn't have had to sit through so much camping and an interminably drawn-out, unengaging, teenage soap opera. Part 2 doesn't suffer from the same poorly handled interpersonal drama by almost entirely removing personal interaction between any of the characters. Everyone is all business, all the time. There's hardly time for Harry and Ron to share two words and none that aren't pragmatic discussions about the task at hand. The same goes for Ron and Hermione's romantic reconciliation. When estranged true love's reunite in the heat of battle, it should be an emotional experience. But like many of the scenes in the film, Yates relies to heavily on the audience's knowledge of the book and not actually spending the time on telling the story in the film. Film kit contains everything you need to recreate the scene from the book! Some assembly required (emotions not included). With this in mind, I find it amazing Yates handled "Snape's Memory" so well. Or well enough for it to provoke an emotional response in me. He must have known this scene would be make-or-break for the movie. Actually, | 21 7 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 120 – STEAMPUNK | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/NH120-640.jpg) The most legitimate or most dubious of all cosplay fandoms? 'Tis a conundrum which is devilishly difficult to deduce an answer to. For a sub-genre that's never had a bona-fide "even your mother knows it" hit, steampunk sports a deucedly large legion of dedicated followers. Perhaps this is due to this same underground status. Fans can be as creative as they want without dressing like any particular character. And what razzes a fan's berries more than their favourite games, books and movies being virtually unrecognized by the general public? Or the general public being unaware a film such as Wild Wild West is part of a larger subculture (though perhaps steampunkers would like to forget about that one too). Reading list: Leviathan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_%28Westerfeld_novel%29) (Westerfeld); Airborn (http://kennethoppel.com/airborn/airborn.shtml) (Oppel); The Shadow In The North (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ruby_in_the_Smoke) (Pullman); His Dark Materials (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/His_Dark_Materials) (Pullman); Firefly (http://www.darkhorse.com/Search/serenity) (Serenity comics) | 8 7 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 119 – Behind the Curtain | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/NH119-640.jpg) Ignore the podcasters behind the curtain. Not so much a collection of gaffs, blunders and bloopers, our fourth "gag reel" is more like deleted scenes, alternate endings and candid moments from between takes. Mostly it's tangents that were edited out for being too tangential to even be easter eggs. A look behind the curtain, so to speak, or a chance to hang out in Jakob and Mandi's basement with their cats. If that's your kind of thing you might even enjoy this tangy collection of pointless tangents. If this is your first time here, please consider listening to one of our other episodes first. Link: Simply Syndicated Toronto Meet-up 2011 thread. | 1 7 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 118 – Bored Games 2 | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/nh118-640.jpg) Looking over the shownotes of our first board games episode, it seems to me we cover absolutely no new ground in this episode. Except of course this episode contains 100% more Kennedy of the Starbase 66 and Books You Should Read podcasts. And really, any topic would have just been an excuse to hang out and gab. This was recorded just before the Charlie Sheen #winning explosion and before every single person knew what Angry Birds is all about. Amazing how fast pop culture moves. Links: Settlers of Catan List of Monopoly editions Possible board game movies Best movie board games Kensington (http://www.tragsnart.co.uk/kenshub/kensington/kensington.htm) | 23 6 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 117 – Debating Debators of Debate | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/nh117-640.jpg) Forget chess clubs, forget spelling bees, forget matheletes and band camp, if you want to discuss nerdy school activities, citing the debate team itself is a strong argument. Not only is it an intellectual pursuit but there's a huge element of dorky role-playing involved. It's sort of like the law court or government version of LARPing. Even spelling bee kids admit it's just a spelling bee. The sophists on the debate team always seemed to really believe they were preparing for future careers as UN diplomats or that their dialectic tournaments really mattered in some way. Or this negative attitude of mine towards these deliberating debutantes could have simply been a slacker's knee-jerk aversion to people who seem to care about things. Fashion sense, physical attributes and social graces aside, one of the things that separates the nerd from the chaff is earnest sincerity and enthusiasm. You'll never find a cooly-wooly getting hot and bothered about contentious issues such as euthanasia, abortion and capital punishment. Feigned indifference about such things, if not outright obtuseness, is what makes them cool. Conversely, it also makes them douchebags. Well, that and not caring if the Enterprise or a Star Destroyer would win in a fire fight. That makes them cool. Anyone who care about that is a douchebag of a nerdier colour. | 16 6 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 116 – Sci-Fi vs. Fantasy | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/116-640.jpg) This week we return to the cage and battle it out to decide what is the nerdier fandom: Science Fiction or Fantasy. Star Wars is famously not considered hard Science Fiction by nerds. Instead it's given dubious terms like space opera or the ponderous fantasy-that-happens-to-be-set-in-space. Conversely, nerds will often cite Star Trek as being proper Science Fiction since it is supposedly based on scientific concepts. Even if warp drive is based on actual scientific theories, really it's just as much space-fantasy as Star Wars' generally unexplained hyperdrive. And is the Vulcan mind meld really any less magical than the Jedi mind trick? If you 're going to be completely honest about it, no, it's not. But more importantly, for the average person, it's just all the same pile of space s**t, as one of my roommates used to say with her face scrunched up like a cat's ass. But if you're a nerd and want to quibble, as nerds often do, Original Series Star Trek actually was real Science Fiction. Frequent instances of space-wizardry aside, each episode was based on a classic sci-fi concept. Whether it was speculating on alien biology or quantum mechanics, the crew's weekly adventures were merely the backdrop to the bright idea hatched by that episode's writer. The Next Generation was less interested in scientific speculation and more interested in exploring socio-political concepts. Science was relegated to merely being the excuse for the Enterprise to visit the planet/star system of the week. By the time Deep Space Nine came along, science had been almost entirely discarded in favour of pure space opera. Which is ultimately what almost all contemporary Sci-Fi has become. Battlestar Galactica was really just Odysseus in space trying to make his way home; the Stargates are closer to magical wardrobes than CERN reactors; the the aliens in District 9 could be exchanged for human refugees; Avatar could easily have been told in a traditional fantasy setting with magic and elves instead of science and aliens—the sci-fi elements were really not essential to any of these stories. They really are Fantasy-Adventure stores with a few technological trappings. On the other hand, films such as Inception and Moon entirely rely on their Sci-Fi premises. But films like these are rare compared to the fantasy-that-happens-to-be-set-in-space. You can still find plenty of hardcore Science Fiction of course. Speculative, often cautionary, stories about emerging technologies, time travel and interstellar exploration are alive and well in print. Yet they remain the domain of a niche market. Your average reader might pick up a Michael Creighton, but will shudder at the sight of something by Ben Bova. Now take into consideration the popularity of Harry Potter, Twilight, the Lord of the Rings films, every damn vampire franchise currently going, perennially popular horror tropes such as demonic possessions and hauntings, and it appears that these days Fantasy is far more popular than Science Fiction. Especially if you add "space opera" to Fantasy's score. As I said before, by default your average Normie is going pigeonhole anything set in space as Sci-Fi. And who's to say they'd be wrong in doing so? If you find Star Wars filed under Fantasy in a video store, you know you've walked into a joint run by some nerd-ass geeks. Just having a separate Fantasy section would be pretty telling, actually. It probably has a killer selection though. If you find this store in Toronto, let me know. Cage match result: Sci-Fi is the bigger, nerdier hurdle. As long as you ignore the existence of LARPing. | 9 6 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 115 – Oh, Kanada | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/NH115-640.jpg) Canada, really? The true north strong and free is a hurdle? Well, Sgt. Kanada on the forums suggested we do an episode where we explain Canada to non-Canadians. Well, we recorded this episode instead where we explain nothing. But Canada really can be a hurdle sometimes. Or at least the Canada made up of polite Mounties playing hockey with sticks made of old Tim Horton's cups glued together with maple syrup and pucks made of beaver pelts sure is. It's a hurdle because it's all lies. By and large, Canadians are not particularly friendly or respectful or polite. We're not all that progressive in our thinking and our environmental record isn't too shiny either. As for our cuddly Mounties, just ask the protesters who attended the G20 protests last summer what they think (hint: they traded in their red coats for black riot gear). Any time we manage to be respectful towards other human beings or uphold our humanitarian/socialist ideals, it's done out of a knee-jerk reaction to not being American. For instance we're not a melting pot of cultures, we're a cultural mosaic. The idea being that we value diversity over assimilation. I'm not convinced this approach actually works on a pragmatic level and might be the root of the lack of social cohesion in our cities or a true national identity. But it is a big part of what makes Canada a Canadian country. Specifically that, when talking about socio-political issues, we take the moral high-ground over our neighbours to the south who prefer a homogenous and, theoretically, more easily controlled society. And that's the crux of it. We're a country defined by not being another country. That's our whole national identity. Yet somehow we delude ourselves that this is a legitimate source of self-worth. We're those nerdy kids relegated to the corner of the high school cafeteria who take pride in at least not being jocks. And it's a shitty corner of the cafeteria, let me tell you. The reason the jocks don't sit up here is because the windows leak, there's a freezing draft eight months of the year, and in the summer the heater gets cranked up to 11 so everything becomes a sweltering sauna. Oh, by the way, I'm only talking about Central Canada. You see, there's actually four Canadas and only one that really matters. There's the Maritime provinces on the East Coast, there's Western Canada and then there's Central Canada which is the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. And that's the only true Canada. This is where most Canadians live. Or, at least, the only Canadians the Federal government considers the needs of when making policy. Notice I didn't mention the fourth Canada? Most Canadians wouldn't either. That's Northern Canada which only exists to be forgotten and sometimes get screwed over by the rest of us. The weirdest thing about Central Canada is half of it wants to leave. Quebec has had a separatist movement since the 1800's. This has something to do with speaking French. Most of Canada wants them to stay. Though if pressed for a reason why, they'd probably just tell you something about as eloquent and considered as "Because" or "Well, they're part of Canada. They can't leave." Mostly, no one wants the poutine pipeline to dry up. That's not a euphemism for a**l porn, we just like having a douchie name for cheese and gravy on fries. Really, Canada is too big and under-populated to work as a nation. Only a country with this small a gene-pool would offer up Chad Kroeger (http://www.chartattack.com/files/imagecache/content_image-680xauto/chart_global/news/85604996.jpg) as one of our best and brightest. I'm a patriot and all, but I can certainly sympathize with another province wanting to distance itself from Alberta. Growing up in British Columbia—which has about as much to do with Canada as Britain or Columbia—I was a big proponent of the Cascadian Independence Movement. Like any Utopian dream, | 3 6 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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NH 114 – Wil Wheaton Special | (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v312/ampcom/NH114-640.jpg) The man, the myth, the Mandi's teenage crush. We talk about Wheaton through the ages from Gordie to @wilw. Shownotes: The Hurdled Nerd (http://wp.me/puTeT-tc) | 27 5 11 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 25 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Calling This Nerdles Just To Winde Mandi Up!
Sorry for that Mandi. This is a fandabulous look at all things nerdy. So nerdy that you look at the hurdle it presents and think "I don't know if it's worth it!" Well, get a pair of experts opinion on whether the Nerd Hurdle is worth tackling...then go away and make your own mind up! Fantastic podcast, great humour and very funny. ori-STUDFARM gives it 2 thumbs up...but only because he only has 2 thumbs. I'd reward more if I could!
Love/Hate?
I have a weird love hate relationship with this show. I love the banter and sense of humour of the hosts, but I sometimes hate what they say about certain subjects and genres. Then, I remember its all just opinions, and my friends and I do the same thing about mainstream media. They get things horribly wrong at times, but its easy to forgive them and come back for another dose.
Just listen to it.
You'll know before long if it's your cup of tea. I happen to think this podcast is made almost entirely out of awesomness.
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