How do you like it so far?

What do scary people watch when they need to escape from this scary world? This week's media recommendations come from the experts of horror: Video Palace co-creator Mike Monello (also a creator of the Blair Witch Project) and Qiana Whitted, author of EC Comics: Race, Shock and Social Protest, which won the 2020 Eisner Award for best academic/scholarly work.

This week's media recommendations come from Crystal Echo Hawk, founder and CEO of IllumiNative, a research-driven initiative created and led by Natives that is challenging negative narratives and supporting accurate and authentic portrayals of Native communities in pop culture.

The How Do You Like It So Far team wishes you a happy 2021! With last year being one of collective pain, sorrow and loss, we need a new anthem for a new day that can inspire and comfort us. Take some recs from Varun Soni, USC's Dean of Religious Life. He has certainly helped plenty of Trojans through spiritual hardships, and hopefully the words of the seminal Bob Dylan can do the same to you.

2020 is finally coming to a close, and with it, also comes the year's final media recommendations from the How Do You Like It So Far team! Today's recommendations come from Set Hernandez Rongkilyo, an undocumented immigrant filmmaker and community organizer.

Tis the season to be jolly (even if the world is burning), and with it, our weekly media recommendation is here! This week we have Sue Ding, who is a documentary filmmaker and new media creator based in Los Angeles. She directs and produces nonfiction media—for platforms including The New York Times, PBS, and Netflix (latter of which released her new film "The Claudia Kishi Club"!!)

This week's pop culture recommendations come from those who change the world with them -- Janae Phillips, Director of Leadership and Education for the Harry Potter Alliance, who oversees the Granger Leadership Academy and the Fandom Forward study guides project, among other things. Shawn Taylor is one of the founders of Nerds of Color and a founding organizer of the Black Comix Arts Festival, a festival that highlights and promotes artists on the margins of the mainstream comic book industry.

As winter approaches, we all need our list of media recs to keep us warm and safe during this season! This week's episode features Suzanne Scott, author of Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry. Also on the episode is Susan Kresnicka, a cultural and business anthropologist and president and founder of cultural research firm Kresnicka Research and Insights!

Guest Dexter Thomas, Doctor of Asian Studies and reporter for Vice News, joins us to talk about the freedom in not having to pretend he’s a neutral journalist with no biases, the complicated relationship between Japanese Hip Hop and Blackness, and the new activism on TikTok (among other things). Plus, find out What’s Making Us Sappy!

This week's episode of "What's Making You Sappy" is all about the legacy of Octavia Butler, an exceptional science fiction writer who wrote about gender and sexuality in bold new ways...

USC colleagues Zoë Corwin and Neftalie Williams join us to share some of what they’ve found in their groundbreaking study, Skateboarding, Schools, and Society, and why those findings are so important.