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Matt Belinkie, Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather celebrate the last podcast of the year with the themes that made 2024 what it was. Lee defies gravity, Wrather buys reading glasses, Belinkie revs up his chainsaw sword, and Fenzel steps back for a logo 3. It’s not a year in review, because who could review it all, and it’s not a look forward to 2025, because who wants to spoil the surprise? We talk synchronic vs. diachronic framing of virtuosity and ask what Wicked has in common with the South Korean political crisis and what Warhammer 40k has to do with the Babysitters’ Club. It may be more than you think!
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Further Reading
- Warhammer 40k on the Babysitters’ Club Club fandom wiki
- Ed O’Neill “Al Bundy” the Journey to Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt from the Jiu-Jitsu Times
- Modern Family: Commencement, also on fandom featuring Sensei Ron
- Graeme O’Neal Shows Entertainment Weekly Showing Idina Menzel’s Reaction to Cynthia Ervino’s Cinematic Reinterpretation of Idina Menzel’s Stage Interpretation of Defying Gravity by Stephen Schwarz
- Henry Cavill’s Warhammer 40K Cinematic Universe Signs on the Line with Amazon and He’s Over the Moon: ‘A fantastic place to start,’ from PC Gamer
- Caitlin Clark: Athlete of the Year, 2024, from TIME
- Synchrony and Diachrony: James Stirling’s Students at Yale, lecture by Emmanuel Petit, PhD at the Yale School of Architecture
- Guin Saga to Resume 4 Years After Original Novelist’s Passing, from the Anime News Network
Sooooooo… Longtime listener, infrequent commenter, but I absolutely grew up on the Baby Sitters Club. I haven’t touched any of the books since I was a little girl in the early 90s, so my memory isn’t super duper fresh, but since you asked if readers are expected to know a lot of lore:
The Baby Sitters Club books are written so that you can pick up any book in any order, and you don’t need any prior familiarity with the franchise. In fact, the first 3 chapters in every book are almost word-for-word identical. They introduce the key characters and 1-2 defining traits and explain any important lore (what is a baby sitters club, who founded it, what is everyone’s role within the club, etc.) Most regular readers in my class would start reading each book at chapter 4 because they got sick of the repetition, but I was a completionist who wanted to read every. Single. Word., I read each book straight through.
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