Two Marshall professors discussed guilty pleasure films during a live episode of their podcast, “Giant Bombs,” at HerdCon on Saturday, March 1.

Cody Lumpkin and Ian Nolte, assistant professors in the English department at Marshall University, are the hosts of the “Giant Bombs” podcast. In their podcast, they discuss films that were bombs at the box office and are generally perceived to be bad films.

They hosted a live episode as one of the panels at the 2025 HerdCon, where they discussed their guilty pleasure films and asked audience members to share their own examples of guilty pleasure films. They defined guilty pleasure films as films that cause others to question your taste in movies if they find out you enjoy them.

During the discussion, Lumpkin said his guilty pleasure film was the 1983 Western film “Lone Wolf McQuade” starring Chuck Norris. Nolte’s guilty pleasure film was the 1990 horror film “Tremors.”

During the portion of the podcast where audience members were invited to share their guilty pleasure films, a variety of films were mentioned. They ranged from 1997’s “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” to the 2015 sci-fi film “Jupiter Ascending,” and one audience member mentioned “Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie” as their guilty pleasure.

Lumpkin said Nolte had come to him with the idea of doing a class about movies that flopped but couldn’t figure out how to make it a full class.

“Part of what we do is teach film classes, and I think it was some sort of conversation that Ian had wanted to do a class about films that flopped,” Lumpkin said. “I was already doing one podcast, so I thought, ‘I want to do another podcast.’”

Nolte said his interest in the topic of box office flops stems from his interest in the financial side of movies, something he said is part of being a fan of movies.

“I think it’s really interesting to talk about because I have this real fascination with the movie business, and the financial side of movies is very tied into the core identity of them,” Nolte said. “The movie industry trained audiences to think that way. ‘How much did this movie cost? How much did it make?’ It’s just part of being a movie fan.”

Lumpkin’s interest in box office flops comes from exploring the process and what went wrong.

“All the interesting and terrible things that can happen in that process, from somebody writes a script to somebody gets the money to somebody shoots it and then edits it,” Lumpkin said. “There’s so many places where it can go wrong.”

Nolte and Lumpkin said one of their favorite parts of the podcast is exploring the most historically significant box office failures.

“I really like when we dig into the famous box office failures that were historically important,” Nolte said.

“The ones that destroyed studios and killed careers,” Lumpkin said.

When Nolte and Lumpkin were asked what their favorite movie they’ve covered on the podcast has been, “Cats” was the first movie that came to mind.

“I remember really having a good time looking at the movie ‘Cats.’ I had not watched it or really ever planned to see it,” Nolte said. “I got super excited. I got to experience this movie that had been on the periphery of my life and I thought that was really fun to talk about.”

“You know, and it’s just nightmare fuel. It’s awful. It was just awful,” Lumpkin said.

When asked what advice he would give to people who want to start their own podcasts, Lumpkin’s advice was clear: just do it.

“It’s just one of those things where the only way you’re going to get better at it is to do it,” Lumpkin said.

Ashton Pack can be contacted at [email protected].