Episode 491 - Live from the Library
Added 2025-06-23 03:16:50 +0000 UTCIn which we record live from the Library of Congress; time travel complicates everything; X-Men is a fundamentally queer narrative; we attempt to summarize a lot of history very fast; and when identities are politicized, claiming them becomes a political act.
X-PLAINED:
LC-GLOBE
The first openly queer X-Man
Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men
Why we do what we do
Why the X-Men are worth studying
Returning nuance to critical discussion of media
A brief(ish) history of X-Men and queerness in X-Men
Iceman Watch
Retroactive foreshadowing
The mutant metaphor
Found family
Subtext
Text
Facets of mutant activism
Coming-out stories
Various vectors of diversity
Some comics Jay wrote
Comics in libraries
Where to start with Jay & Miles X-Plain the X-Men
X-Men for horror fans
Our favorite X-Men lineups
Identity politics
The T-O virus vs. the Legacy Virus
NEXT EPISODE: Brain Sharks!
This episode doesn’t exactly have a traditional visual companion, but you can click through the entire slide deck from the live show–and find links to the essays we mentioned–on our blog.
Jay has some additional thoughts on identity politics, which you can read here.
Comments
Just wanted to say I thought this was a great celebration of your podcast, and absolutely the one I'd recommend as a first listen.
David Sawtell
2025-06-24 17:31:03 +0000 UTCThat was... a lot. One might think that Mutant X May was training for this, with how much got compressed here. I did have a thought regarding the possibility of making Magneto a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. There *is* a fairly well-known Rwandan actor who just announced that his last gig was up (though it was probably shot like a year ago): Ncuti Gatwa. That would be... interesting.
Staffan Johansson
2025-06-24 16:26:07 +0000 UTC
