Recently, I started my own podcast titled Matt Talks Media. It is a podcast designed to bridge the gap between academic research and underground culture. The central goal of the show is to explore how non-mainstream media practices—from punk zines and DIY tape trading to music blogs, fan-driven archives, and indie horror cinema—function as vital spaces of cultural creation, identity formation, and community building. 

The podcast draws on my background as both a scholar and a practitioner. Having spent years as a musician in underground bands, a reviewer on Metal-Archives, and a blogger through Murdered Culture, I approach these topics from an autoethnographic perspective that combines lived experience with scholarly insight. Each episode introduces listeners to key concepts from communication and media studies while grounding them in accessible stories, examples, and cultural artifacts. 

While I am not an expert film critic, I have always found joy in binge watching movies. This led me into trying a project that is new to me, and that I plan to capture this experience using Matt Talks Media as a platform. That would be the 31 for 31 movie challenge. 

Essentially, the challenge is: watch a movie each day for 31 days (often, October), so 31 movies in 31 days. Often horror movies or spooky / Halloween‐themed films. Sometimes people follow a prompt list (e.g. “a film from the ’80s”, “a slasher”, “a supernatural story”, etc.) to pick their daily movie. It is popular in horror fandom, to celebrate the lead‐up to Halloween, revisit classics and discover new ones. Community sharing (hashtags, social media, forums) is a big part—people share their watchlists, daily picks, reviews. There are variations though, such as people allowing re‐watches; sometimes every movie must be new to them; sometimes strict genre rules. Prompts make the challenge more structured and varied. 

For my 31 for 31 challenge, I plan on taking every single movie recommendation that I receive and putting them on a spinning wheel. Each day, I will spin the wheel and let fate decide on what movie I watch. To be safe, I plan on adding many more than 31 films on this spinning wheel in case I want to watch more than one movie in a day. I will even have a space on the wheel for a wildcard pick (movie of my choice) and a space for specific streaming apps (such as picking a movie from Shudder). I will not be as strict about this challenge as some have in the past – some movies on my list I have seen (but it has been a while, and I would love a refresher). One example of this is the V/H/S series of movies. 

There is still time to build my list, and I would love to take recommendations from our community. If you have a horror or spooky movie you like to watch, please comment below or send an email to [email protected] and let me know! I plan on releasing a weekly podcast episode in October to discuss the challenge and review the movies I watched during that week. To follow along, you can find Matt Talks Media episodes on Spotify, link below. 

Listen now: https://open.spotify.com/show/1AQ2HS3m7gS7acv61IJ1MZ?si=Iye4QdUNQie–gL1dfKoyg