The range of human motivations is complex and layered — as is the spectrum of human emotion. Still, for years, our entertainment focused on some pretty binary archetypes. Specifically: mustache-twirling black-hatted villains, and square-jawed white-hatted heroes. But at some point, the creators of our entertainment decided to give fictional characters more realistic ranges of feelings and agendas, thereby changing the storytelling game forever. In this episode of FYF, Saint and Jim break out some of their favorite examples of dramatic heel-face turns, face-heel turns, and flexible, antihero-style grey morality. Not to mention all the nerdiest news in the nexus.

Right up top: both content and trigger warnings are in full effect for this edition. Regular listeners of Fuel Your Fandom know that Saint and Jim first met while working as activists — fighting online child predation for the Perverted-Justice.com watchdog org as well as Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator." So when the Max limited series "Quiet On Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV" dropped, it was more or less required viewing...even if it was undeniably uncomfortable. In this episode, your hosts break down the content of the show from the perspective of people who spent a significant portion of their lives fighting exactly the sort of people and events that took place behind the scenes at Nickelodeon under the auspices of Dan Schneider's television empire, and offer the unique perspective of a couple of everyday schmucks who were involved in a broadcast-based movement that operated on the polar opposite of the same issue.

Iconic vehicles in entertainment is a uniquely western phenomenon, fueled by American "car culture" and a certain sense of gas-fueled adventure. Almost everyone who has ever seen a TV show or movie almost certainly has a favorite legendary ride that made them sit up and take notice, and maybe even wish they could borrow the keys for a joyride. Whether it was Doc Brown's "Back to the Future" DeLorean, The Gran Torino of "Starsky & Hutch" or even the Ghostbusters' ECTO-1, these cars were often characters themselves in their respective franchises, and deserve the same reverence as their human counterparts. In this edition of FYF, Saint and Jim kick the tires on Hollywood's most famous wheels, and take 'em out for a little speculative spin. Plus, all the nerdy news and tangents you've come to know and tolerate.

There are just so many amazing avenues of entertainment to be into these days, it can be hard to keep up. So admittedly, Saint and Jim have the odd blind spot when it comes to certain areas of fandom. One area in which they share somewhat of a collective question mark? Horror movies. So on today's episode of Fuel Your Fandom, the boys welcome Milwaukee's Maven of the Macabre, Katie Kadaver. She's not just a fan of horror films, she walks the walk 24/7. From performing in horror-themed burlesque with Grindhouse Tease, to heading to horror conventions to kick it with Lloyd Kaufman and the crew at Troma Films, to her co-hosting duties on "The VHS Vault" podcast, Katie knows horror like the inside of her eyelids — making her the perfect guest to come onto the show to give the neophytes a crash course in all things creepy. Shove this in your earholes...if you DARE.

Memory is a funny thing. Sometimes you'll hear a song, and it takes you right back to where you were the last time you heard it. Or maybe it's a scent — like baked goods, or a spring flower bloom — that makes your brain light up. But food-based nostalgia? That's a different animal entirely. If you eat something you haven't had in awhile, that can really set off the cranial fireworks. On this episode, Saint and Jim take a look at the discontinued snacks and beverages from years past that aren't available anymore, and that they'd really love to see make a return. So grab some Dunkaroos, Magic Middles and an OK Soda, and earhole this. PLUS: the nerdiest of news.

Saint and Jim usually like to keep things light around the ol' Fuel Your Fandom...dom. Still, there's no arguing that a lot of people are dealing with a lot lately. When a cute Muppet asks an innocuous "How is everybody?" on social media, only to be deluged with people in genuine pain? It's apparent we're all just ambulatory bundles of raw nerves just looking for anyone to support and listen to us. So for Episode #180, the FYF boys DO a bit of a 180°, and talk through some mental health stuff. Time to ask the listeners how YOU'RE doing, kick around some coping mechanisms, and maybe even get around to some hope. PLUS: the finals of our March (Madness) into Villainy evil-off, and plenty of nerd news.

If there's any one thing that unites us all, it's that sooner or later we're gonna shuffle off this mortal coil. And as long as we all have to check out of Hotel Earth at some point, why not do what we can to make our final moments in this realm as notable as possible? Granted, not everyone is in line for the luxury of knowing when the Reaper is gonna tap us on the shoulder and tell us it's time to go, but some of history's most notable people did have caregivers and loved ones hanging on their every word — right up to their last breath. So in this episode, Saint and Jim dig into what a smattering of these folks used that breath to say, from the poignant to the profound to the downright silly. Plus: all the news that's fit to nerd.

Kids' entertainment has always leaned pretty heavily toward the fantastic. Not only do young people have the sort of imaginations required to really appreciate the impossible, but since so much of kids' TV and movies tends to be (either literally or figuratively) animated, it's a good medium to explore some out-there concepts. That said, there's a pretty big difference between fanciful and farcical. Because while it's entirely plausible to accept, say...a prince who turns into a superhero when he holds a weapon aloft and says some magic words, it's a little less easy to swallow that nobody around him seems to realize that whenever the king's kid disappears, a guy who looks just like him (down to the identical haircut and green cat sidekick) just happens to show up. On this episode, Saint and Jim take a look at improbable concepts in kids' entertainment that felt like a teensy bit of a suspension (of disbelief) bridge too far.

Saint and Jim still aren't sports fans, but they can't give up on the March Madness runoff just yet. Reason being, there's another friendly neighborhood superhero — one with a baddie bracket so big, it takes a whole separate universe just to hold them all. Of course, we're referring to Spider-Man. The web-slinger. The wall-crawler. Peter Parker himself. With a fiend folio just as Robust as the Dark Knight's, it was necessary to break this out into a second edition to match up these miscreants into their own head-to-heads, and determine the best of the worst. So lets put them all in a jar, shake it up, and see who comes out on top. Plus: NEWS.

Look, Saint and Jim aren't sports fans. They're just not. BUT. That doesn't mean they're not totally into elimination-style matchups! So in honor of March Madness, the FYF boys are running their own brackets to determine a much-contested set of win/lose outcomes. BUT. Because this is nerd territory, the combatants aren't athletes. They're antagonists. And since geeks have argued since time out of mind over who has the better rogues' gallery — Batman or Spider-Man — this episode seeks to answer that question once and for all. In the first part of the contest, Batman's biggest baddies will square off to see who comes out on top. Next week, we'll hash out which of the friendly neighborhood wall-crawlers opponents is the best of the worst. Then it's a head-to-head Bat vs. Spider enemy duke-out to crown the crossover champ. Plus, as always, oodles of news. EARHOLE TIME.

Fuel Your Fandom touched on sitting in front of a full schedule of favorite Saturday-morning animation awhile back, and noted that the shows themselves were only part of the experience. After all, what's sitting criss-cross applesauce in front of a cartoon without some Apple JACKS and a cartoon on the front of the box? That's because somewhere along the line, Post, General Mills and Kellogg's figured out that if there was a cute character on their containers of cocoa-frosted sugar bombs, kids would be more likely to beg their parents for bowl after bowl of the stuff at the grocery store. And thus, cereal mascots were born. In this edition of FYF, Saint and Jim take a look at the flake-flogging powers of the Capn's, Tigers, Frogs and Toucans of yore with a milk-soaked spokescritter rundown. Plus, as always, all the biggest news from the Geek-O-Sphere.

Of all the things that it should be impossible to hurt yourself on, kids' toys should be the #1 item on the list. And yet, there have been COUNTLESS playthings that were created, marketed and sold to kids that have had the potential —and sometimes even the sad result — of causing harm to children who were just trying to amuse themselves. And we're not just talking about toys with sharp edges, projectiles, or parts that were choking hazards. We're referring to molten lead smelters. Model ovens that could deliver second-degree burns. Innocent-looking dolls whose rictus grins remained fixed even as they gnawed off your hair. And even science kits with ACTUAL RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL. It's a wonder any of us survived. Join Saint and Jim as they deep-dive into these deadly toys, plus — all the news that's fit to nerd.

Not every technology has what it takes to survive. As the inevitable progress of tech has unwaveringly marched on, we've seen countless types of storage media come and go. Punch cards gave way to refrigerator-sized disc drives, which in turn gave way to floppies, then smaller floppies, then magnetic drives, optical drives, solid state and now cloud and streaming data. It's all efficient, convenient, and cheap. That said, the slow death of physical media hasn't been without its share of problems. As long as a given piece of information only exists as ones and zeros in the ether somewhere, there exists rampant opportunity for chicanery – such as a gaming executive going on record as saying, "You'll need to get comfortable not owning your games." In this episode, Saint and Jim break down what the death of hard storage means to those of us who enjoy entertainment. And believe this: the irony of doing so on a podcast isn't lost on either of them.

Are you guys ready for Season 6? Saint and Jim have a whole bunch of fun surprises in store for their favorite Fuelers this time around, including awesome special guests, all-new takes on timeless topics, and even some stuff they can't really announce yet. And it all kicks off with this opener, where your intrepid hosts dive face-first into VR. But not in the hilariously physical way you see those people in the "fail" videos do it, where they destroy their televisions. Plus, the usual tangent-fests into superhero happenings, celebrity peccadilloes, and other nerdy news. EARHOLE THIS FOR SEASON 6!

It's the final episode of the season, and it's time to get meta. Surprising though it may sound, Saint and Jim have never before had occasion to actually talk about...podcasts. and although it may seem a little bit recursive to do so, they also couldn't think of a better way to put a cap on the year, or the season. Because they not only do a podcast (obviously), they also listen to plenty of them. All the better to continue immersing themselves in the most self-indulgent of "art" forms, right? However, since two guys hanging out on a podcast talking about podcasts wasn't enough of an audio fractal, they also welcome old friend and former fellow cyber-vigilante Matt Luria (a.k.a. Twitch streamer SoonerJetta) to add a dash of panache onto the top of the usual ouroboros of oral narrative. So let's all hunker down and say goodbye to 2023 with an episode so ridiculously introspective that it has to open its own mouth to see where it's going.

For every thousand fans of anything, there are always one or two people who go the opposite route. Not apathy — but rather, active opposition. Literally nothing that exists in pop culture is so innocuous that some busybody moron can't clutch their pearls and raise a high-heavens-level stink about it. Enter: the hater freakout. Sometimes it's the fact that a video game has a character of ambiguous gender. Other times, someone tilts their heads, squints, and decides something is about drugs or sex when it's obviously not. Ultimately, the rallying cry of "wOn'T aNyBoDy tHiNk oF tHe cHiLdReN?!?" is the pearl-clutching mantra these colossal killjoys hide behind when projecting their own dark desires and/or insecurities on people just trying to enjoy some light entertainment. In this edition of FYF, Saint and Jim look at some of the downright dumbest dustups — and maybe even one or two where they have to kinda admit that MAYBE the buzzkills might have had a point.

Fans are often conditioned to see layers of subtext within their favorite entertainment properties. That's because sometimes the creators are intentionally building in sneaky plot hints for sharp-eyed devotées to discover. Or, putting in subtle references or background events that point to larger symbolic meanings. But most of the time, the human tendency to indulge gestalt musings leads us to assume things that may or may not actually be there. Three years ago, Jim's first episode as a co-host of Fuel Your Fandom centered on looking at fan theories. And since they couldn't get to them all the first time around, Saint and Jim thought the milestone warranted another trek through this fertile topic. So get ready to hear pop cultures ideas about everything from the nature of super-spy secret identities, to whether dinosaurs might have been friskier than they were hungry, to how a beloved Muppet may have been somehow been involved in a nefarious terrorist attack. Earhole time.

Music is entertaining enough all by its lonesome. But the narrative histories of our favorite bands are often pretty compelling, as well. So Hollywood often dramatizes the stories of bands that don't really exist in order to tell similar stories. But since you can't tell a nonexistent band's tale without actual music to back it up, you sorta need to fill that gap with legit compositions and real-life performances. Enter the "Fake Band"; i.e., a musical project that exists in the liminal spaces between fictional and factual existence, but that's still more or less obligated to somehow produce real music. In this edition of FYF, Saint and Jim take a look at some of the best not-exactly-real-but-still-kinda groups in entertainment history, as well as the (often great) music they put out.

Spoilers. We've all seen 'em, and we all hate 'em. Part of the reason why so many blockbusters do such huge business on opening weekends is because fans are afraid some loose-lipped loser will blow the plot points of a highly-anticipated film before they have a chance to see 'em for themselves. Hell, friend of the show Smo rightfully hates spoilers so much he got his own interstitial jingle. But what happens when the spoilers come not from a big-mouthed fan, but from the studios themselves? On this edition of FYF, Saint and Jim take a look at some instances of massive disconnect between the creatives who make the movies, and the marketing and merch folks who promote them — the latter of which often miss the "no spoilers" memo when it comes to not divulging big story elements.

It's one of the few universal truths of television: every show has at least one absolutely detestable weasel; that one character who seems to exist in the narrative for the sole purpose of making everybody else look wonderful by comparison. Sometimes it's a character that was legitimately set up to be a villain. Other times, It's a persona we were supposed to identify with, but that nonetheless displays a less-than-likeable arc over time. Or maybe it's even a precocious kid the producers decided to add to infuse a shot of fresh blood into an atrophied cast dynamic. Regardless, there are certain characters viewers just gleefully loathe, and usually for good reason. The irony is, these characters are usually so hated because the actors portraying them are uncommonly good at being bad — so there's a double-edged sword of cognitive dissonance to a lot of how we feel about them. On this edition of FYF, Saint and Jim step up to the pump, and fill up an entire tank's worth of vitriol for these  on-screen targets of deserved fandom ire...even as we celebrate (most of) the actors themselves.