Tag archives for Pop Omnivore
Posted by The dysfunctional Bluth family returns this Sunday with 15 new episodes of the canceled sitcom Arrested Development via Netflix. And you know what that means: more chicken dancing! Arrested Development is built on recurring jokes but one of the biggest crowd-pleasers of all is the Bluth family chicken dance, deployed to taunt other family members,…
If you’ve been watching the FX network’s retro spy series, The Americans, which has its season finale tonight, you may or may not have noticed a recurring cameo by the National Geographic headquarters building as seen from the window of the show’s FBI headquarters (that’s us in the picture above, with our flat roof…
Posted by “Don’t Frack My Mother.” That’s the title of a catchy folk song now making the web rounds, written by Beatles scion Sean Lennon and performed by Yoko Ono, Liv Tyler, and assorted other celebrities. The song is intended to send a message to New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who will decide, likely later this month,…
Posted by Copernicus got a Google Doodle! The late, great astronomer, whose birthday is today, February 19, would perhaps be puzzled by Google – but only for a second. Nicolaus Copernicus was never one to shy away from new ideas (get a modern astronomer’s take on Copernicus). If you’d like a little primer on why Copernicus deserves…
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Pop Omnivore visited the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Bethesda, Maryland, looking for environmentally minded comics. Here’s what we found…
The movie For Greater Glory depicts a war that many Americans have never heard of: Mexico’s Cristero War of 1926–1929, aka La Cristiada. The war began when president Plutarco Elias Calles started enforcing anti-religious sections of the country’s constitution. For NGM intern Antonia Rico, the war is familiar…
Posted by If you follow politics, you’ve probably noticed that a certain character with classic good looks and black-and-white views (a bit square, you might say) has drawn a lot of attention this week. No, not that guy…we’re talking about the Etch-A-Sketch! The classic toy is famous for its transience—just shake it to start afresh—but did you…
In the new movie 21 Jump Street, two young cops are sent back to high school as undercover police officers. The pair are shocked to find that in the few years they’ve been away, the social strata have been seismically restructured: Biking to school, recycling and otherwise showing concern for the environment makes you a Cool Kid. To find out whether this depiction of the new cool is accurate, Pop Omnivore spoke with National Geographic Emerging Explorer Juan Martinez.
This weekend, National Geographic’s All Roads Film Project presents the film series, Women Hold Up Half the Sky, notable films by award-winning female directors, screening at NG headquarters in Washington, D.C. Here are previews of three of the films, “My Wedding and Other Secrets,” “Here I Am,” and “A Small Act.”
The newly minted Oscar winner for best documentary, Undefeated, has left many critics gushing—with praise, but also tears. The true-life sports tale follows a struggling high school football team in a poor area of Memphis, Tennessee, whose fortunes begin to turn under the guidance of a devoted and determined coach. The emotional story has reduced…
Among the winners at this year’s Sundance Film Festival was Valley of Saints, an environmental drama that casts light on the toll that human habitation and tourism have taken on Kashmir’s lovely Dal Lake. The plot centers around a boatman named Gulzar and his best friend, who are planning to run away from the conflict…
If you saw the Super Bowl halftime show, you probably wondered, “Who’s that guy in a toga bouncing crazily on a rope next to Madonna? And how’s he doing it?” The guy was Andy Lewis, a slacklining champion from California, and he did it after many, many years of practice. Slacklining is different from tightrope…
Posted by The nominal star of movie The Grey is Liam Neeson. The real stars are the CGI-enhanced hungry wolves that pursue him and his fellow plane-crash survivors through Alaska’s pristine wilderness. But is their behavior based in reality? To parse wolf fact from fiction, we caught up with Daniel MacNulty, a wildlife-ecology professor at Utah State University…
The plot of the new movie War Horse is driven by the deep, powerful bond between a boy named Albert and his horse, Joey, who both end up serving in World War I. Watching it made us wonder: What do we really know about horses’ emotions? Carissa Wickens, an assistant professor in equine science at the University of Delaware, provides answers…
In Breaking Dawn, Part 1, vampire Edward and human Bella make a baby. The fetus needs blood for nourishment, matures at an accelerated rate (from conception to birth in less than a month), and threatens to crush Bella “from the inside out.” This made us wonder: In the folklore of vampires, are there human-vampire hybrids?…
By Mel White Word got out months ago that a movie was in the works based on the book The Big Year, which recounts the true exploits of three birdwatchers competing to find the highest number of species in North America in a single calendar year. This wasn’t some made-for-TV cheapie destined for an obscure…
The popular new movie Dolphin Tale tells the touching story of a young dolphin named Winter who loses her tail and survives with a prosthetic one. It’s based on a true story—Winter plays herself—but some parts were fictionalized to make it more appealing to young viewers. Which parts? To find out, we contacted one of Winter’s real-life rescuers,
Teresa Mazza from the Hubbs-Seaworld Research Institute in Melbourne Beach, Florida.
In the film 50/50, a 27-year-old man is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, called Schwannoma neurofibrosarcoma. His odds of survival: 50 percent. Medical experts, family, friends—even WebMD—proceed to offer the patient a whirlwind of scientific data, raising more questions than answers about the nature of cancer. We contacted Anna Franklin, medical director of…
As we’ve mentioned before, some of us at National Geographic are fans of the globe-trotting television series The Amazing Race. In this season’s premiere, passports played a starring role. A team of former Vegas showgirls stopped at a gas station in Los Angeles to get directions to the airport. After driving off, one of them…
Our Idiot Brother,starring Paul Rudd as the idiot, is actually full of idiots. Rudd’s character Ned is an organic farmer. One of his fellow (idiot) farmers oversleeps one day and blames the rooster at the farm, claiming that it did not crow, probably because it was “depressed.” This made us wonder: Do roosters always crow…
Set in 1873, the summer blockbuster Cowboys & Aliens follows an outlaw (Daniel Craig), a cattle baron (Harrison Ford), and an Apache chief (Raoul Trujillo) as they fight a technologically superior foe from a foreign world. Filmed largely on location in and around Albuquerque, New Mexico, the film features breathtaking desert landscapes, gun-toting cowboys, and…
Could something like the plot of the movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes really happen? To find out, we spoke with Luis P. Villarreal, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at the School of Biological Sciences at University of California, Irvine, and director for the Center for Virus Research, about gene therapy, how viruses can be helpful, and why we probably won’t be battling hyper-intelligent apes anytime soon.
Do alligators really eat marshmallows? We had to find out after watching True Blood. For the uninitiated, True Blood is an HBO television series wherein vampires coexist with humans in a town called Bon Temps, La. In Sunday’s episode, Tommy kills his parents and, with the help of his brother Sam, disposes of them in…
In the new film Zookeeper, Kevin James stars as a bumbling zookeeper who seeks relationship advice from his closest friends—the animals. Different animals at the zoo take turns giving their view on how to get the girl. But do these cinematic animals know what they’re talking about? We talked to biologists to get the truth about animal mating. Here’s a look at the animals’ advice in the movie, and whether or not it holds up:
Even if you—like many of us—have never heard of Cambodian psych-pop, you may have heard some recently. A song by the California-based band Dengue Fever, 1000 Tears of a Tarantula, is featured in the soundtrack of the new movie The Hangover: Part Two. Where did this trippy music come from? East meeting west. As the…
