372 Pages We'll Never Get Back | |
---|---|
Presentation | |
Starring | Michael J. Nelson Conor Lastowka |
Genre | Literary criticism, satire |
Language | English |
Length | typically 90–150 minutes per episode |
Production | |
Theme music composed by | Conor Lastowka |
Audio format | MP3 |
No. of seasons | 31 |
No. of episodes | 178 |
Publication | |
Original release | September 1, 2017 |
Ratings | 4.857142857142857/5, 4.8/5 |
Related | |
Related shows | RiffTrax Like Trees Walking |
Website | 372pages |
372 Pages We'll Never Get Back is a podcast series created by Michael J. Nelson (of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and RiffTrax fame) and Conor Lastowka (writer for RiffTrax and novelist). Beginning in 2017 with Ernest Cline's Ready Player One (the titular 372-page book), the podcast discusses literature that the two men "are probably going to hate", [1] [2] [3] though they have stated they end up enjoying some books much more than others.
Season | Episodes | Release dates | Book | Summary |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | 1–8 | September 1 – October 27, 2017 | Ready Player One – Ernest Cline | Bestselling novel, set in a dystopian future where a young man immerses himself in a virtual reality world based on 1980s popular culture and partakes in a competition for fame and fortune. |
2 | 9–16 | January 26 – March 23, 2018 | Armada – Ernest Cline | A teenager plays an online video game about defending against an alien invasion, only to find out that the game is a simulator to prepare him against an actual alien invasion. |
3 | 19–21 | October 12–26, 2018 | The Eye of Argon – Jim Theis | Sword and sorcery short story about the barbarian Grignr and his adventures. |
4 | 22–29 | November 2, 2018 – January 16, 2019 | TekWar – William Shatner and Ron Goulart | A science fiction neo-noir detective novel set in 22nd-century Southern California and Mexico, centered around the fictional electronic drug "tek". |
5 | 30–33 | February 4–27, 2019 | The Forensic Certified Public Accountant and the Cremated 64-SQUARES Financial Statements – Dwight David Thrash, CPA FCPA CGMA | Self-published novel about a Certified Public Accountant who attempts to solve the destruction of a skyscraper by the "Cat-Burglar Terrorist" and reconstruct its financial documents. |
6 | 34–38 | March 11 – April 11, 2019 | Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff – Sean Penn | Satirical novel by the Oscar-winning actor, notorious for its "experimental" prose style. |
7 | 39–47 | May 6 – July 1, 2019 | The Mister – E. L. James | Romance novel by the author of the bestselling Fifty Shades series about a British aristocrat who falls in love with his Albanian maid. |
8 | 48–53 | July 15 – September 3, 2019 | Trucking Through Time – Charles E. Harris | A self-published novel about time traveling truck drivers. |
9 | 54–58 | September 16 – October 23, 2019 | The Lair of the White Worm – Bram Stoker | Edwardian-era horror novel by the author of Dracula about a mysterious monster threatening rural Derbyshire. |
10 | 59–67 | November 13, 2019 – January 30, 2020 | Shadow Moon – Chris Claremont and George Lucas | Fantasy novel serving as a sequel to the 1988 film Willow . |
11 | 68–70 | February 18 – March 10, 2020 | Moon People – Dale M. Courtney | Self-published science fiction romance novel. |
12 | 71–77 | April 6 – June 3, 2020 | Digital Fortress – Dan Brown | Mystery/thriller novel on the theme of government surveillance and cryptography. |
13 | 78–80 | June 30 – July 24, 2020 | My Immortal – Tara Gilesbie | Notorious Harry Potter fan fiction in which the characters are depicted as goths and preps. |
14 | 81–88 | August 7 – November 13, 2020 | Midnight Sun – Stephenie Meyer | Retelling of the young adult vampire romance Twilight from the point-of-view of Edward Cullen. |
15 | 89–95 | November 26, 2020 – February 26, 2021 | Ready Player Two – Ernest Cline | Sequel to Ready Player One ; Wade Watts finds a new advancement in Halliday's vaults that could change the world, and battles an artificial intelligence based on Halliday. |
16 | 96–99 | March 23 – April 30, 2021 | The Quilters Push Back: Miranda Hathaway Adventure #7 – Mary Devlin Lynch and Debbie Devlin Zook with Beth Devlin-Keune | Cozy mystery in which a team of quilters confronts the American opioid crisis. |
17 | 100–107 | May 20 – September 17, 2021 | Modelland – Tyra Banks and Michael Salort | A young aspiring model attends a magical boarding school for models. |
18 | 108–112 | October 8 – November 19, 2021 | Irene Iddesleigh – Amanda McKittrick Ros | Victorian melodrama long ridiculed for its purple prose: a young English lady marries an older man, realizes she does not love him, and then elopes to America with her tutor. |
19 | 113–119 | December 10, 2021 – March 23, 2022 | Antigua: The Land of Fairies, Wizards and Heroes (Part 1) – Denise Brown Ellis and Larry Ellis | Self-published children's fantasy novel in which warrior princesses fight an evil dragon. |
20 | 120–124 | April 1 – June 17, 2022 | Gump and Co. – Winston Groom | Sequel to the 1986 novel Forrest Gump , published one year after that book's movie adaptation. |
21 | 125–130 | July 8 – October 21, 2022 | Super Constitution – Charles Kim | Science-fiction novel about a "troika" of college students who create a single world government by technological means. |
22 | 131–134 | November 8 – December 23, 2022 | Murder in Christmas River: A Christmas Cozy Mystery – Meg Muldoon | Christmas-themed cozy mystery about the murder of a man behind a pie shop during a gingerbread house building competition. |
23 | 135–139 | January 18 – March 24, 2023 | Edison's Conquest of Mars – Garrett P. Serviss | 19th-century science fiction, considered the first space opera, in which Thomas Edison leads Earth in a war against Martian invaders. |
24 | 140–146 | April 11 – June 23, 2023 | Artemis – Andy Weir | Sci-fi heist adventure follow-up to The Martian about a young Saudi Arabian woman living in the titular lunar colony and plotting to get rich. |
25 | 147–150 | July 21 – September 7, 2023 | The Starlight Barking – Dodie Smith | Sequel to The Hundred and One Dalmatians , in which dogs acquire supernatural powers and all other creatures are put into a deep sleep. |
26 | 151–155 | October 5 – November 29, 2023 | The Adventures of the Teen Archaeologists: The Land of the Moepek – Larry Ellis and Denise Brown Ellis | Young adult fiction about teenaged archaeologists who discover an ancient African civilization. |
27 | 156–158 | December 11–26, 2023 | A Killer Christmas Affair: A Cozy Mystery (A Sunflower Farms Cozy Mystery) – Sussie Jordan | Christmas-themed cozy mystery set in the fictional town of Sunflower, Texas. |
28 | 159–164 | January 30 – March 20, 2024 | Kaileb's Dream – Kaileb Varney | Self-published young adult novel about a 15-year-old boy whose alter ego is White Bo of the White Blades Council, a foundation protecting the world from evil. |
29 | 165–169 | April 17 – June 20, 2024 | Bridge to Bat City – Ernest Cline | Children's novel set in 1980s Austin, Texas, about a girl who helps a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats find a new home under the Congress Avenue Bridge. |
30 | 170–174 | July 9 – October 17, 2024 | Tek Kill – William Shatner and Ron Goulart | Eighth novel of the TekWar franchise, a series of science fiction neo-noir detective novels set in 22nd-century Southern California and Mexico and centered around the fictional electronic drug "tek". Private detective Jake Cardigan's boss, Walter Bascomb, is arrested for murder, and Cardigan tries to clear his name. |
31 | 175–178 | November 14 – December 26, 2024 | The Quilting Cruise: Miranda Hathaway Adventure #9 – Mary Devlin Lynch and Beth Devlin-Keune | Cozy mystery in which a quilters' guild encounter a mystery aboard a cruise. |
32 | 179– | January 16, 2025 – present | The Legend of Rah and the Muggles – Nancy Stouffer | Children's science fiction novel about the mutated survivors of a nuclear holocaust; became notorious when the author claimed in a lawsuit that J. K. Rowling had stolen her ideas to make the Harry Potter series. |
In 2017, Marc Hershon of Vulture praised the first season of the podcast as a "comedically brutal thrashing" of Ready Player One. [4]
The A.V. Club's Mike Vanderbilt interviewed Nelson and Lastowka in 2018. [5]
In 2019, Alice Nuttall of Book Riot wrote, "Nelson and Lastowka spin bad books into gold. Listening to an episode is like sitting in on a reading group run by people who are much funnier than you are." [6] In 2020, Emily Martin compared 372 Pages to the film podcast How Did This Get Made? . [7]
In 2020, E. A. Henson of Biff Bam Pop! praised the podcast, saying, "372 Pages manages to avoid those common podcast pitfalls and hilarious[ sic ] transcend the source material...these books are so amazingly bad that they almost seem like some kind of outsider art." [8]
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an American science fiction comedy television series created by Joel Hodgson. The show premiered on KTMA-TV in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 24, 1988. It then moved to nationwide broadcast, first on The Comedy Channel for two seasons, then Comedy Central for five seasons until its cancellation in 1996. Thereafter, it was picked up by The Sci-Fi Channel and aired for three more seasons until another cancellation in August 1999. A 60-episode syndication package titled The Mystery Science Theater Hour was produced in 1993 and broadcast on Comedy Central and syndicated to TV stations in 1995. In 2015, Hodgson led a crowdfunded revival of the series with 14 episodes in its eleventh season, first released on Netflix on April 14, 2017, with another six-episode season following on November 22, 2018. A second successful crowdfunding effort in 2021 produced 13 additional episodes shown on the Gizmoplex, an online platform that Hodgson developed which launched in March 2022. As of 2023, 230 episodes and a feature film had been produced as well as three live tours.
Michael John Nelson is an American comedian and writer, most known for his work on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K). Nelson was the head writer of the series for most of the show's original eleven-year run, and spent half of that time as the on-air host, also named Mike Nelson. In addition to writing books, Nelson is currently part of the online movie riffing site RiffTrax, and was previously part of the straight-to-DVD Film Crew with fellow MST3K alumni, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy.
Kevin Wagner Murphy is an American actor and writer best known as the voice and puppeteer of Tom Servo on the Peabody Award-winning comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000. Murphy also records audio commentary tracks with Michael J. Nelson and Bill Corbett for Nelson's RiffTrax website.
Mary Jo Pehl is an American writer, actress, and comedian. She is best known for her various roles on the television series Mystery Science Theater 3000.
William DanielCorbett is an American writer and performer for television, film and theatre. He was a writer and performer on the cult television show Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K), for which he voiced Crow T. Robot during the show's later seasons on the Sci Fi Channel. During that time, he also played the character Observer, along with other minor roles.
Janet Varney is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer. She is known for voicing the character of Korra in the Nickelodeon animated television series The Legend of Korra, co-starring as Sheriff Evie Barret in the television series Stan Against Evil, and a recurring role as Becca Barbara in You're the Worst.
RiffTrax is an American company that produces scripted humorous commentary tracks which are synced to feature films, education shorts, and television episodes. With the talents of former Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) cast members and writers, RiffTrax also produces several live shows each year which are broadcast to movie theaters. The style of commentating originated from MST3K, their earlier television series, in which they would similarly mock films aloud while watching them. As of September 2024, RiffTrax has riffed 554 feature films, 488 short films, and 16 TV episodes.
Shadow Moon is a fantasy novel written by Chris Claremont and George Lucas. Published in 1995, it was the continuation of the 1988 motion picture Willow. This is the first book of the Chronicles of the Shadow War trilogy, followed by Shadow Dawn and Shadow Star.
Ernest Christy Cline is an American science fiction novelist, slam poet and screenwriter. He wrote the novels Ready Player One, Armada and Ready Player Two, and co-wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation of Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Ready Player One is a 2011 science fiction novel, and the debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. The story, set in a dystopia in 2045, follows protagonist Wade Watts on his search for an Easter egg in a worldwide virtual reality game, the discovery of which would lead him to inherit the game creator's fortune and the game itself. Cline sold the rights to publish the novel in June 2010, in a bidding war to the Crown Publishing Group. The book was published on August 16, 2011. An audiobook narrated by Wil Wheaton was released the same day.Ch. 20 In 2012, the book received an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association division of the American Library Association and won the 2011 Prometheus Award.
Modelland is a young adult novel written by model Tyra Banks and ghostwriter Michael Salort, published in 2011.
TekWar is a science fiction novel written by William Shatner, assisted by (uncredited) science fiction author Ron Goulart. It was first published by G. P. Putnam's Sons in October 1989. TekWar is the first of nine novels, and created an entire TekWar franchise, which includes the TekWorld comic book series, the video game William Shatner's TekWar, the TekWar TV series, and several related TV movies, including TekLords.
The Flop House is a comedy podcast about films that flop, either commercially or critically, produced every two weeks. It is made in Brooklyn, New York and hosted by Dan McCoy, Stuart Wellington, and Elliott Kalan. Each episode focuses on a specific bad movie, a film noted for being a critical or commercial failure.
Armada is a science fiction novel by Ernest Cline, published on July 14, 2015 by Crown Publishing Group. The story follows a teenager who plays an online video game about defending against an alien invasion, only to find out that the game is a simulator to prepare him and people around the world for defending against an actual alien invasion.
Emily Joanne Axford is an American actress, writer, and producer. She is best known for her various roles in CollegeHumor videos, her role as Emily on the truTV comedy Adam Ruins Everything, and for her role on the Pop original Hot Date.
Doughboys is an audio podcast hosted by Mike Mitchell and Nick Wiger focused on reviewing chain restaurants, including fast food restaurants, fast casual restaurants, and sit-down restaurants. The podcast started in May 2015, and began offering bonus episodes for Patreon supporters in March 2017 under the name Doughboys Double. The theme music for both Doughboys and Doughboys Double were composed and produced by Michael Cassady. Doughboys joined the Headgum network in April 2018, after having previously been members of the Feral Audio network until its disbandment.
Ready Player Two is a 2020 science fiction novel by American author Ernest Cline. It is the sequel to his 2011 debut novel Ready Player One. Plans for a Ready Player One sequel were first announced in 2015, though Cline did not begin writing the book until late 2017. Cline attributes further developments to the critical and financial success of the film adaptation of the first novel released in 2018. The story follows Wade Watts who, after winning control of the OASIS, discovers an advanced virtual reality headset and subsequently a new quest for a mysterious prize.
A fantasy podcast is a podcast related to or discussing the fantasy genre, which usually focuses on the magical, supernatural, mythical, or folkloric. Fantasy stories are set in fictional universes or fantasy worlds that are often reminiscent of the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Despite having a fictional setting, fantasy stories can contain or reference locations, events, or people from the real world. Characters in these stories often encounter fictional creatures such as dwarves, elves, dragons, and fairies. Common types of fantasy podcasts are audio dramas, narrated short stories, role-playing games, or discussions and reviews of fantasy topics such as fantasy films, books, games, and other media. The intended audience of a fantasy podcast can vary from young children to adults. Fantasy podcasts emerged from storytelling and the creation of the radio. Fantasy podcasts have often been adapted into television programs, graphic novels, and comics. Fantasy podcasts are a subgenre of fiction podcasts and are distinguished from science fiction podcasts and horror podcasts by the absence of scientific or macabre themes, respectively, though these subgenres regularly overlap.