Feminist Frequency Radio
Feminist Frequency
Feminist Frequency Radio is coming for your media. Each week, Anita Sarkeesian, Carolyn Petit, and Ebony Aster bring you dispatches from the pop culture wars and invite you to listen in on their entertaining, stimulating, take-no-prisoners conversations about the latest films, games, and tv. They’ll be bringing their distinctly different feminist perspectives to the mix as they celebrate and critique it all. With special guests from all over the feminist media sphere, an assortment of great bonus segments, and your questions keeping them on their toes, Feminist Frequency Radio is there to help you dig deeper into the things you love. Warning: Feminist Frequency Radio may significantly enhance your media experience. Join our community at Patreon.com/femfreq Feminist Frequency Radio is powered by Simplecast
- 1 hour 5 minutesFFR 271: 98th Oscar Nominees
Kat and A.C. go through the films that will be fêted at this Sunday's Academy Awards. We feel a big shift in our relationship to Oscar movies, and aren't sure how much of that is the disintegration of the entertainment industry, and how much is just growing up. Plus, we play a new game all about The Relentless Diane Warren's 17 Oscar-Nominated Songs. (Don't laugh: her career trajectory has been a real cultural bellwether!)
Discussed in this episode:
- Timothée Chalamet receiving a voguing performance
- The Focus on the Family reviews of all the Best Picture nominees: Bugonia, F1, Frankenstein, Hamnet, Marty Supreme, One Battle After Another, The Secret Agent, Sentimental Value, Sinners, Train Dreams
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- NEW: katexmachina.substack.com
- letterboxd.com/katexmachina
- bsky.app/profile/katexmachina.bsky.social
- twitter.com/kat_ex_machina
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11 March 2026, 9:00 am - 46 minutes 8 secondsFFR 270: Real Women Have Curves
Our "Focus on the Family" season is back after an unexpected hiatus! [Once again: sorry for the interruption; a member of our team had an ongoing family medical situation, but we're happy to be with you again.] It was a big nostalgia kick for Kat to revisit Patricia Cardoso's 2002 Sundance darling Real Women Have Curves, but this was a first-time watch for A.C. We talk about how America Ferrera's body has been perceived by Hollywood over the years, from this and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants to Barbie. It's a hyper-realistic and occasionally difficult to watch portrayal of a fraught mother-daughter dynamic, and well worth its place as a modern classic preserved by the National Film Registry.
Discussed in this episode:
- Ugly Betty rewatch podcast "Viva Betty"
- FFR's conversation about An Unmarried Woman
Find Kat:
- NEW: katexmachina.substack.com
- letterboxd.com/katexmachina
- bsky.app/profile/katexmachina.bsky.social
- twitter.com/kat_ex_machina
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3 March 2026, 10:00 am - 45 minutes 27 secondsFFR 269: The Kids Are All Right
For the first episode of our "Focus on the Family" season, we're taking it back to 2010—a time before Prop 8 when a Sundance movie could really make a big impact on the widespread film landscape. Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right is a great example of a specific early 21st-century portrayal of queer families with a "coastal elite" filter, and how it straddled the line between caricature and accuracy.
Discussed in this episode:
- Patti Harrison's Annette Bening impersonation
- Focus on the Family's "Plugged In" review
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10 December 2025, 10:00 am - 11 minutes 49 secondsFFR Season Preview: Focus on the Family
FFR is going to be back soon with a new season focusing on the family... just in time for the holidays! Listen to our mini preview ep where we'll explain the theme in more detail, and give a little teaser of the special bonus segment each episode will include. From festival favorites to reality TV, we're looking ahead to discussing onscreen portrayals of all different kinds of families, and what Hollywood thinks it's saying about any of it.
Discussed in this episode:
- Focus on the Family's "Plugged In" review of The Fast and the Furious
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25 November 2025, 10:56 pm - 9 minutes 13 secondsFFR Bonus: Emilia Pérez
"Bingo." As the epic conclusion to our season of Musical Mayhem, we watched Jacques Audiard's 2024 extravaganza Emilia Pérez. Did we hate it? Kinda! Did we love it? Kinda! We also have a teaser of next season on Feminist Frequency Radio, coming soon. This full episode is a special bonus for upper-level Patreon supporters, but also available as a one-off purchase for non-subscribers.
>> Listen to the full episode HERE <<
Discussed in this episode:
- Focus on the Family's "Plugged In" review
- Protest parody film Johanne Sacrebleu
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28 October 2025, 8:12 pm - 50 minutes 5 secondsFFR 268: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
It's Andrew Lloyd Webber week in our Musical Mayhem season, and to turn the volume all the way up, we've selected Joel Schumacher's most renowned superhero flick, The Phantom of the Opera. And for those of you who couldn't care less about musicals, but have been along for the ride with us on this journey... this episode concludes the season!
Next week we're bringing a special bonus episode for Patreon supporters at the Fearless Feminist tier and above. Yes, we're finally watching Emilia Pérez...
Discussed in this episode: Antonio Banderas as the Phantom, and the animal kingdom's own Christine Daaé
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15 October 2025, 9:00 am - 43 minutes 14 secondsFFR 267: THE WIZ
Watching the 1968 film adaptation of the Broadway musical The Wiz, we can't help but feel that director Sidney Lumet and screenwriter Joel Schumacher deeply underserved their stars, craftspeople, and source material. It's impossible not to be captivated by the performances, especially as the movie is such a memorable intersection of the careers of Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, but the staging and writing continually let us down.
Discussed in this episode—the September 1975 Essence article by Sharon Stockard Martin: "The Tanning of Oz: Reflections on the Usurpation of a Myth," which is available for Patreon supporters to read at patreon.com/femfreq.
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8 October 2025, 9:00 am - 50 minutes 55 secondsFFR 266: FUNNY GIRL
We couldn't do a whole season about movie musicals without watching a Barbra vehicle. There are so many elements of 1968's Funny Girl that elevate the form, from William Wyler's direction taking a stage show to the screen, and Streisand's performance as her character Fanny Brice evolves from fame-hungry teenager to worldly star and wife. We found a lot of nuance in the film's exploration of labor and gender dynamics, and can't help but watch this as a memetic piece of a puzzle with Postcards from the Edge, All That Jazz, A Star Is Born and countless explorations of insecure men struggling in romantic relationships with successful women.
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30 September 2025, 9:00 am - 16 minutes 11 secondsFFR Bonus: DEAR EVAN HANSEN
Halfway through our season of Musical Mayhem, we decided to dive deep into the shallow waters of 2021's Dear Evan Hansen. After covering Glee last week, we felt like we had no other choice. This full-length episode is a special bonus for Patreon supporters at the "Fearless Feminist" level and above, but it's also available as a one-time purchase for non-subscribers.
>> Listen to the full episode HERE <<
Discussed in this episode:
- The promotional art for Ben Platt's Reverie tour
- Platt's cover of "Diet Pepsi"
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25 September 2025, 1:19 am - 1 hour 2 minutesFFR 265: GLEE
Never has the micro-generational divide between Kat and A.C. been sharper than in their relationships to Glee, arguably the most influential musical series ever on television. It's hard not to get glib in our discussion of the "issues" the show attempted to tackle over the course of its six seasons. Especially when the show's tone varied from mean-spirited to earnest representation politics throughout the course of the series.
Discussed in this episode:
- ‘Glee’ 15th Anniversary: Looking Back at a Cultural Moment Never to Be Repeated by Erin Strecker for IndieWire in 2024
- Don't Rain on My Parade (Plasma's Version)
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17 September 2025, 9:00 am - 45 minutes 47 secondsFFR 264: ALL THAT JAZZ
Is this the first "perfect" movie we've covered on this podcast? This was Kat's first time watching Bob Fosse's 1979 self-referential musical drama All That Jazz, one of A.C.'s absolute favorites. There's something compelling about the way Joe Gideon, Fosse's stand-in for himself, is far from being the hero in his own larger-than-life story of addiction, perfectionism, and womanizing. And though the ending is foreshadowed from the opening scene, it's still jaw dropping when it happens.
Discussed in this episode:
- "Le Jeune Homme et La Mort," the opening ballet from White Nights (1985).
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10 September 2025, 9:00 am - More Episodes? Get the App