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Make Me A Nerd with Mandy Kaplan

Make Me A Nerd with Mandy Kaplan

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Hey folks. Mandy Kaplan here. I’d like to share a bit about my intentions and mission for MMAN if you’ll indulge me. You will? Huzzah!

Look, I am a lot of things. I’m a writer, actress, mother, and lover of musicals and cats, but NOT Cats, The Musical. Give me a little bit of credit, would ya? So...throughout my life, I’ve been surrounded (and intrigued) by all things nerd. A sister who plays D&D, a Star Wars-obsessed husband, friends who love anime, comic books, video games, and...well, you get the picture. Somehow, I have always held it all at arm's length. Not to get too deep, but maybe I never thought I was smart enough to follow it. Or maybe I have control issues and have never been able to embrace fantastical things like dragons and time travel. Until now!

So, with an open mind and heart, I am ready to join this massive (and beautifully inclusive) club and GEEK THE #%$ OUT! It’s time for all my wonderfully strange friends to baptize me into NERD-DOM. Please join me on this journey. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover or remember a side of yourself along the way. Or at least make fun of me as I try!© TruStory FM Arte Ciencias Sociales
Episodios
  • Truth or Dare with Abdi Nazemian

    Truth or Dare with Abdi Nazemian
    Nov 10 2025
    You know how some documentaries just happen and others ignite a cultural revolution in a cone bra? This week, Mandy reunites with her former roommate, award-winning author, screenwriter, and Madonna scholar-in-chief Abdi Nazemian, to talk about the pop documentary that practically reinvented fame itself: Madonna: Truth or Dare.Abdi literary résumé is already Hall of Fame (Only This Beautiful Moment, Like a Love Story, Exquisite Things)— and he returns to Make Me a Nerd to nerd out about the film that shaped him, inspired his art, and very nearly ruined his high-school Spanish play. (That’s right: the man skipped Madonna for drama club.)Together, Mandy and Abdi dissect the film’s legacy with the obsessive joy of two grad students armed with eyeliner. They talk about Madonna’s audacity, the film’s accidental queerness that became very intentional, and the moment every gay teen of the early ’90s realized: “Oh, so this is what freedom looks like—with backup dancers.” Abdi recounts how the documentary cracked open his world, how its fearless visibility still echoes in his own banned-book-era storytelling, and why he’s still chasing that mixture of defiance and grace three decades later.Along the way, they tackle everything from Warren Beatty’s “human raincloud” energy to Madonna’s evolving accent to the question that divides all fandoms: “Can you be both bratty and brave?” The answer, obviously, is yes—if you’re Madonna. Or Abdi Nazemian.Links & Notes
    • Madonna: Truth or Dare (1991), dir. Alek Keshishian
    • Strike a Pose (2016)
    • Like a Love Story, Exquisite Things, Only This Beautiful Moment by Abdi Nazemian
    • Dick Tracy soundtrack (I’m Breathless)
    • Blonde Ambition Tour / Like a Prayer album
    • Madonna’s Nightline interview on Justify My Love (1990)
    Make Me a Nerd
    • Website: makemeanerd.com/join
    • Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens
    • TikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast

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    1 h y 1 m
  • The Last Kingdom with Matt Boren

    The Last Kingdom with Matt Boren
    Nov 3 2025
    This week on Make Me a Nerd, Mandy Kaplan straps on her metaphorical codpiece and dives headfirst into the sword-swinging, land-grabbing, god-invoking world of The Last Kingdom with guest Matt Boren¹—actor, author, screenwriter, and senior prom date emeritus. And if you’re wondering how the man who wrote Folded Notes from High School and Minister of Loneliness became obsessed with decapitations, Danish warlords, and subtitles thick with blood and Old English vowels—well, Mandy is too. But it turns out: it’s all just General Hospital with furs and beards.Matt lays out the appeal of The Last Kingdom not as a history lesson (God no), but as an ongoing saga of trauma, identity, and—most crucially—soap-operatic betrayal. We learn that he came to the show late, post-Game of Thrones awakening, and stayed for the storylines that feel pulled directly from daytime TV: surprise siblings, secret lineages, and more brooding than a Shakespeare festival in the rain. Mandy, meanwhile, is just trying to keep track of who’s who, why everyone is named Uhtred, and whether “Sieges are for Turds” is historically accurate or just someone’s idea of a bumper sticker.Together, they cover three episodes: the brutal pilot, the climactic battle of season three, and the series finale disguised as a prequel to a disappointing movie. Along the way, they debate teenage kings, historical trauma, and whether The Last Kingdom is actually just The Princess Bride with more fire and fewer laughs. Mandy confronts her own aversion to violence (there’s so much head stuff), and Matt admits he watches most of the beheadings out of the corner of his eye—because, like most writers, he’s here for the emotional subtext, not the arterial spray.Plus: the quiet horror of teenage monarchs, the eternal trauma of land disputes, and why Mandy wants everyone to just share the damn land already. Also: Matt confesses he may in fact be a “quotationist,” and Mandy delivers her thesis on why all television—yes, even this—is basically Friends with fewer coffee mugs and more impalings.Links & Notes
    • ⚔️ The Last Kingdom on Netflix
    • ⚔️ The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die
    • 📖 Minister of Loneliness by Matt Boren
    • 📚 Folded Notes from High School by Matt Boren
    • 📖 Brackish Waters by Matt Boren
    • 🎥 Matt Boren on Instagram
    Make Me a Nerd
    • Website: makemeanerd.com/join
    • Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_klavens
    • TikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast
    ¹ Matt Boren may not identify as a “nerd,” but any man who quotes General Hospital while explaining 9th-century Anglo-Saxon land disputes is at least a Level 12 Soap Mage. That’s canon.


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    1 h y 1 m
  • Dracula with Lester Ryan Clark

    Dracula with Lester Ryan Clark
    Oct 27 2025
    Dracula is a book where the title character shows up for roughly four chapters and then just... leaves. It's like if "Jaws" spent most of its runtime following insurance adjusters filing claims about boat damage. And yet, somehow, this 1897 novel created pop culture's most enduring monster. That's the central mystery Mandy and guest Lester Ryan Clark tackle in this Halloween extravaganza.Lester teaches Dracula to high schoolers every year (and gradually transforms into Gary Oldman's Dracula throughout Halloween week because he's clearly the best kind of teacher). He confirms what Mandy discovered reading the novel for the first time: Bram Stoker committed the bizarre act of writing a vampire book and then immediately getting bored with his vampire. After a genuinely creepy opening with Jonathan Harker trapped in a Transylvanian castle with a mustached count who climbs walls like a lizard and definitely doesn't eat dinner, the book pivots to diary entries, newspaper clippings, and an excessive amount of Victorian-era day drinking. It's an epistolary novel where characters somehow recall four pages of precise dialogue from memory for their journal entries, which—and stay with me here—doesn't really track.But here's where it gets interesting: Stoker's failure might have been his greatest success. By giving us almost nothing, he forced everyone else to fill in the blanks. We got Bella Lugosi's suave count without a mustache (sorry, Bram), Christopher Lee's menacing aristocrat, the Lost Boys' leather-jacketed vampires, and yes, even Twilight's sparkling immortals. Dracula survives by adapting to whatever each generation finds sexy, which is apparently the most vampire thing possible. The conversation explores why there are so many characters named John/Jonathan/Harker/Hawkins (looking at you, Stoker), why Mina is the book's actual hero despite Victorian men having feelings about her man-brain, what's going on with Renfield eating progressively larger animals, and why the climactic battle happens from a distance through binoculars.They also discuss how Dracula represented Victorian anxieties about foreigners, disease, and women with agency (witches used to be scary because they were "women with power and their own transportation system"), and why the novel works as proto-found-footage horror. Plus: the drinking. So much drinking. Brandy as medicine, brandy to stay awake, brandy to celebrate, brandy to mourn. It's a wonder anyone in Victorian England remained vertical.The episode ends with both agreeing that every film adaptation correctly identified the problem and added more Dracula scenes, because giving people what they want is occasionally good business. Who knew?Links & NotesLester Ryan Clark's Podcasts:
    • Every Minute of Everything Everywhere All at Once
    • The Devil's Details
    Find Lester on Social Media:
    • All platforms: @LesterRyanClark
    Make Me a Nerd:
    • Website: makemeanerd.com/join
    • Instagram: @mandy_kaplan_Kravens
    • TikTok & Bluesky: @mandymiscast
    Mentioned in the Episode:
    • Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (1992)
    • "Renfield" (2023) - starring Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Holt
    • Janice Hallett - British mystery author who writes in epistolary format



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    59 m
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