Unpacking Peanuts

We talk with Neil Cohn, an Eisner-nominated cognitive scientist who looks at how our brains perceive comics. His latest book, Speaking in Pictures, challenges the conventional understandings of how pictures communicate...

In 1980 Legendary Captain Marvel artist C.C. Beck created his personal list of “The Seven Deadly Sins of Comics Creators.” In this episode the gang discuss Beck’s manifesto and see if and how it applies to Schulz's...

The gang celebrates the USA’s birthday by looking at one of the latest iterations of Snoopy’s alter egos…The Revolutionary War patriot. UP Recommends: The American Revolution by Ken Burns Super Context Podcast: An...

The straight man of all straight men gets an episode all to himself. Will the gang finally crack the code on this beloved figure of Peanuts past? Transcript available at UnpackingPeanuts.com Jimmy’s, Michael’s, and...

Finally, it’s come to this: The Roy episode. Roy befriends both Charlie Brown and Linus at camp. And if that’s not exciting enough, old people talk about how neat telephones were. But maybe his main raison d'être is to...

Sally’s pal Eudora finally gets a turn in the spotlight, as the gang revisits her debut sequence from 1978 and finds a fun and unique character who still feels modern. Transcript available at UnpackingPeanuts.com...

We start our look at the bit players in Peanuts in this new season of “Sidekicks and Second Bananas.” In this episode Bill, Olivier, Harriet, Conrad, and Woodstock get to shake their tail feathers in the spotlight...

The gang takes a cockeyed look at the Peanuts strips that make you go “hmmm.” From Charlie Brown sharpening himself to the beauty of a girl named Truffles, it doesn’t get weirder than this. Strips we discuss and the...

Re-Run arrives and struggles to assimilate into the family for the next twenty years. Lucy is still a grouch. Sally still loves Linus. And speaking of consistency, which Peanuts characters changed the least? The gang...

It’s a fun-sized mailbag bonus episode! Listeners ask us probing questions like whose is the adorable voice behind our introduction, and tell us stuff we never knew like there is a plush version of Snoopy as Mister T...

Linus is doing the St. Francis shtick, but that doesn’t stop him from playing a mean shortstop. The gang discusses Schulz’s ability to layer contradictory elements to create some of the richest characters in comics...

The gang celebrates four years of podcasting about Beagles and Blockheads by looking at a totally random group of Peanuts strips, and even a few non-Peanuts strips too! Here's to many more years of joy discussing...

Lucy torments Linus with a call to their blanket-hating grandma. She explains that to be a good brother he has to work at it, and he succeeds with a bowl of ice cream. A new segment is revealed, “Hangin’ Out at the...

Linus’s original struggle for security is with Lucy… and was it her blanket originally?! Plus Linus learns the difference between tv and reality in language he can understand. Transcript available at...

Linus is bringing out Lucy’s inner Lucy, yet somehow his head remains undented. In this episode, the Van Pelt kids’ personalities are slowly coming into focus… No wonder Linus needs that blanket! Transcript available at...