Christopher Brendan Ward IV, better known by the stage name mc chris, is an American rapper, voice actor, comedian, and writer. He is known for his high-pitched voice and for combining his "geek" background with the "gangsta rap" image which resulted in the genre of nerdcore. He has released ten albums, five EPs, one re-release and a tenth anniversary edition of his recordings with the Lee Majors.

The Darkness are a British rock band that formed in Lowestoft, England in 2000. The band consists of Justin Hawkins, his brother Dan Hawkins, Frankie Poullain and Rufus Tiger Taylor.

8bitpeoples is an artist collective and netlabel centered in New York City that focuses on chiptune aesthetics, which is heavily influenced by vintage videogames. 8bitpeoples was founded in 1999 by Jeremiah "Nullsleep" Johnson and Mike "Tangible" Hanlon. It is run by Johnson and Joshua "Bit Shifter" Davis.

Many artists who have appeared on 8bitpeoples have also appeared on compilations on other labels, most notably Astralwerks' 8 Bit Operators compilation, a collection of Kraftwerk songs done in the 8-bit style. 8bitpeoples is also involved in the organization of the Blip Festival, which features 8-bit musicians, often including those on the 8bitpeoples roster.

They provide the vast majority of their releases for free via their website, including printable covers and inserts so that anyone can manufacture a hard copy of their releases.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (often abbreviated to SGM) was an American experimental rock band, formed in 1999 in Oakland, California. The band fused classical, industrial, and art-rock themes throughout their music. They were known to perform elaborate routines on stage and discuss possibly fictitious stories of dada artists and mathematicians.

After the disbanding of Idiot Flesh, Nils Frykdahl and Dan Rathbun joined with Carla Kihlstedt (with whom Frykdahl and Rathbun had played in the band Charming Hostess) to form Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, along with percussionists Moe! Staiano and David Shamrock. Their first performance, on June 22, 1999, was given to a single banana slug (Ariolimax dolichophallus). The following night's performance was their first to a human audience.

Caravan Palace is a French electronic band based in Paris. The band's influences include Django Reinhardt, Vitalic, Lionel Hampton, and Daft Punk. The band released their debut studio album, Caravan Palace, on the Wagram label in October 2008. The record charted in Switzerland, Belgium, and France, where it reached a peak position of number 11.

Minibosses is a progressive rock band originally from Northampton, Massachusetts and now located in Phoenix, Arizona. They are known for their video game music covers, which are instrumental rock variations of the theme music from classic Nintendo video games such as Mega Man, Metroid, and Castlevania. The Phoenix New Times awarded Minibosses their best cover band award in 2006.

From 1997 to 1999, guitarist Aaron Burke and drummer Matt Wood played in Jenova Project, one of the earliest video game cover bands, along with other friends from the same dorm at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In January 2000, Burke and Wood recruited bassist Ben Baraldi to form Minibosses. Initially, the band played both video game covers as well as original songs, and self-released their first album, Minibosses, in September 2000. They were unsatisfied with the quality of this album and have since released new versions of their covers (as well as new covers) on the Minibosses/Penny Winblood split and Brass album. At the same time, they replaced their older songs, which had been freely available to download, with the newer versions found on Brass. From 2000 to present, the band has toured continuously while recording material for new albums.

Powerglove is an American instrumental power metal cover band. They are known to play metal cover versions of classic video game themes. The band is named after the Power Glove, a NES controller accessory.

The Protomen are an American rock band who started their career composing concept albums loosely based on the video game series Mega Man. Their stage names are largely references to pop culture films, song titles, and fictional characters. The group members refer to themselves as storytellers, creating a "rock and roll fable".

Foxy Shazam is an American rock band from Cincinnati, Ohio (composed of lead vocalist Eric Nally, guitarist Loren Turner, pianist Sky White, bassist Daisy Caplan, trumpeter and back-up vocalist Alex Nauth, and drummer Aaron McVeigh). They were formed in 2004. The band released their debut album The Flamingo Trigger independently before signing with Ferret Music, under which they recorded their second album, Introducing. The following year, the band recorded its first major label record with producer John Feldmann. Foxy Shazam signed with Sire Records and released its self-titled major label debut in 2010. The band's fourth studio album, The Church of Rock and Roll, was released in January 2012. Gonzo, the band's fifth album, was released April 2, 2014. They announced in October 2014 they were disbanding for an unknown length of time.

Nullsleep (born Jeremiah Johnson October 7, 1980) is an American electronic musician and computer artist currently residing in New York City. In 1999 he co-founded the low-bit art collective 8bitpeoples, and has served as its lead director since its inception. He is best known for his high-energy Game Boy pop songs.

Johnson graduated from the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University in 2003, where he studied computer science and music. He uses Game Boys and NES consoles to create music.

Born on a United States Air Force base, March AFB in Riverside, California, Johnson's family relocated to New York upon his father's honorable discharge from the USAF shortly after his birth. Most of his childhood was spent on suburban Long Island, where he attended Islip High School and lived with his mother and brother until he was 18 years old.

The Megas is a Los Angeles based independent video game cover band based on the Capcom franchise, Mega Man. They differentiate themselves from artists who have played Mega Man music in the past by adding original lyrics and composing new sections which blend seamlessly with the original compositions. Their lyrics expand on the simple story laid out in the games, giving each of the 8 Robot Masters a unique personality. Their debut album, Get Equipped, based on Mega Man 2, was released in January 2008.

The band has gained notoriety in the video game music scene due to their popularity on sites like Newgrounds and MySpace, as well as numerous live performances all over the United States, primarily at video game conventions and festivals such as MAGfest, Nerdapalooza, and various dates of the Video Games Live tour. Their song "The Annihilation of Monsteropolis/Airman" was featured on the front page of the popular video game music remixing site OverClocked ReMix, and the band itself has been mentioned on Wired magazine's blog, the official Capcom blog and an article on Gibson Guitars' website. The Megas were mentioned again on the official Capcom blog after the release of their acoustic album, Get Acoustic.

Nekrogoblikon is an American melodic death metal band based in Los Angeles, California. The group was formed in 2006, by Tim Lyakhovetskiy and Nicky Calonne. The band has released five full-length albums, Goblin Island, Stench, Heavy Meta, Welcome to Bonkers, and The Fundamental Slimes and Humours, and one EP, Power. The band's music centers on goblins.

MAGFest (Music and Gaming Festival, originally the Mid-Atlantic Gaming Festival) is an annual festival held in the Washington metropolitan area that celebrates video games and video game music, as well as their surrounding culture. MAGFest's primary features are a large open video gaming room, a hall of arcade cabinets, concerts by chiptune artists and video game cover bands, and a Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) LAN Party.

MAGFest's arcade hall is open 24 hours a day. The exhibition hall contains hundreds of full size arcade cabinets, and even pinball machines that are donated for the event from local collectors and vending companies. All arcades are set to play for free on admission price, and are monitored 24 hours a day by a maintenance and technical staff. The arcade hall is decked out with specialty lighting, laser lighting, and music to bring back the golden age of arcades. The game selection ranges from 1970's vintage black and white games, vector monitors games, Cathode Ray Tube games, modern/Indie arcades; as well as contemporary Japanese candy cabinets and Japanese dance/music games like Dance Dance Revolution and Taiko No Tatsujin. Arcades range from various manufacturers like Atari, Nintendo, Taito, Midway, Williams, Capcom, Sega, ICE, Rock Ola, and Exidy. Games challenge various abilities including driving simulators, shooting simulators, labyrinth games, and just plain fun games. There are multiple events and tournaments that occur during the event that allow you to challenge dozens of others for prizes and fame. They also host a ten-game tournament that spans the entire event which allows players to openly compete on 10 classic arcade games to work on getting the highest scores possible with the ultimate prize being given to the player who scores the most points total on all games.

Lindsey Stirling is an American violinist, songwriter, and dancer. She presents choreographed violin performances, in live and music videos found on her official YouTube channel, which she created in 2007.

The Rise of the Synths (Spanish: La rebelión de los sintes) is a 2019 documentary film written and directed by Iván Castell and narrated by filmmaker and composer John Carpenter. The film explores the origins and growth of the electronic music genre known as synthwave, charting its rise in popularity from the underground online music scene to its recent mainstream exposure, following use in retro-themed soundtracks, notably the 2011 film Drive and more recently, the television series Stranger Things.

It is the first feature documentary exploring this underground subculture.

The Rise of the Synths initially began as a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter in April 2016. That campaign failed and was relaunched in October 2016 on Indiegogo, this time reaching its goal. Over the next year, the film was part of the Documentary Campus Masterschool, also participating in the Sheffield Doc/Fest MeetMarket.

James Kent (born 1993), known by his stage name Perturbator, is a French synthwave musician from Paris.

Kent has a background as a guitarist in several black metal bands. Since 2012, he has produced electronic music inspired by cyberpunk culture and from movies such as Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and The Running Man. He uses a variety of software synths in his productions, such as the emulators of old vintage synths like the OB-X or the CS-80. Since his debut EP Night Driving Avenger he has released five full-length albums, the latest of which is Lustful Sacraments on the Blood Music label, and has performed several live shows. Several of his tracks were featured in the 2012 game Hotline Miami and its 2015 sequel Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number. Perturbator's EP Sexualizer was released in part to officially release the song "Miami Disco" and as a way to thank the developers of Hotline Miami. The success of the Hotline Miami games resulted in a greater amount of exposure to a mainstream audience.

David Andrew Burd, better known by his stage name Lil Dicky, is an American rapper, comedian, and actor. He came to prominence with the release of the music video for his song "Ex-Boyfriend" in 2013, which became popular with more than one million views on YouTube in 24 hours. He released his debut album, Professional Rapper, in 2015.

Famadihana is a funerary tradition of the Malagasy people in Madagascar. During this ceremony, known as the turning of the bones, people bring forth the bodies of their ancestors from the family crypts, rewrap the corpses in fresh cloth, and rewrite their names on the cloth so they will always be remembered. Then they dance to live music while carrying the corpses over their heads and go around the tomb before returning the corpses to the family tomb. They believe in celebrating the life lived by the dead person.

Famadihana appears to be a custom of somewhat recent origin, perhaps only since the 17th century in its present form, although it may be an adaptation of premodern double funeral customs from Southeast Asia and Oceania. The custom is based upon a belief that the spirits of the dead finally join the world of the ancestors after the body's complete decomposition and appropriate ceremonies, which may take many years. In Madagascar, this became a regular ritual usually once every five to seven years, and the custom brings together extended families in celebrations of kinship, sometimes even those with troubled relations.

Franck Hueso, better known by his stage name Carpenter Brut, is a French darksynth artist from Poitiers, France. He has released three EPs, EP I (2012), EP II (2013) and EP III (2015) which were collected and released together as the album Trilogy (2015). He later released three additional studio albums, Leather Teeth (2018), Blood Machines OST (2020), and Leather Terror (2022) along with one live album, CarpenterBrutLive (2017). He has also contributed original music to a variety of soundtracks, both for film and video games.

Carpenter Brut claims his relative anonymity is a deliberate artistic choice in order to place more importance on the music itself, rather than the identity of the musician behind it. He started writing music as Carpenter Brut with the intention of mixing sounds from horror films, metal, rock, and electronic music. In live performances Carpenter Brut is joined on stage by guitarist Adrien Grousset and drummer Florent Marcadet, both from the French metal band Hacride.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a 1997 fantasy novel written by British author J. K. Rowling. The first novel in the Harry Potter series and Rowling's debut novel, it follows Harry Potter, a young wizard who discovers his magical heritage on his eleventh birthday, when he receives a letter of acceptance to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry makes close friends and a few enemies during his first year at the school and with the help of his friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, he faces an attempted comeback by the dark wizard Lord Voldemort, who killed Harry's parents, but failed to kill Harry when he was just 15 months old.

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald Tribune for best juvenile fiction. The book remains popular and is recognized as a classic in children's literature.

The Hobbit is set within Tolkien's fictional universe and follows the quest of home-loving Bilbo Baggins, the titular hobbit, to win a share of the treasure guarded by Smaug the dragon. Bilbo's journey takes him from light-hearted, rural surroundings into more sinister territory.

The story is told in the form of an episodic quest, and most chapters introduce a specific creature or type of creature of Tolkien's geography. Bilbo gains a new level of maturity, competence, and wisdom by accepting the disreputable, romantic, fey, and adventurous sides of his nature and applying his wits and common sense. The story reaches its climax in the Battle of Five Armies, where many of the characters and creatures from earlier chapters re-emerge to engage in conflict.

Rumo and His Miraculous Adventures is a fantasy novel, written and comically illustrated by German author Walter Moers.

The events of this novel take place on the fictional continent of Zamonia, which is also featured in Moers' previous novel The 13​1⁄2 Lives of Captain Bluebear. While Rumo is not a prequel to Bluebear, the two do have many parallel events and returning characters such as Volzotan Smyke, Professor Nightingale, and Fredda the Alpine Imp. There is also a character named Rumo in The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, but this character, briefly seen, is not the protagonist of Rumo and His Miraculous Adventures but rather a different Wolperting using the same name. This epic consists of two separate sections, with both sections together telling the tale of how Rumo the Wolperting became Zamonia's most illustrious hero.

Serial is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, narrating a nonfiction story over multiple episodes. The series was co-created and is co-produced by Koenig and Julie Snyder and developed by This American Life; as of July 2020, it is owned by The New York Times.

Season 1 investigated the 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee (Hangul: 이해민), an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County. Season 2 focused on Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, an American Army soldier who was held for five years by the Taliban, and then charged with desertion. Season 3, which debuted in September 2018, explores cases within the Justice Center Complex in the Cleveland area.

Serial ranked number one on iTunes even before its debut and remained there for several weeks. Serial won a Peabody Award in April 2015 for its innovative telling of a long-form nonfiction story. As of September 2018, episodes of seasons 1 and 2 have been downloaded over 340 million times, establishing an ongoing podcast world record.

99% Invisible is a radio show and podcast produced and created by Roman Mars that focuses on design. It began as a collaborative project between San Francisco public radio station KALW and the American Institute of Architects in San Francisco. The show has been distributed by PRX for broadcasting on a number of radio stations and as a podcast on the Radiotopia network. On April 28, 2021, Roman Mars announced in an introduction of a re-released episode that 99% Invisible had been purchased by Sirius XM and marketed as part of its Stitcher Radio brand.

The name of the show was derived from a quote by Buckminster Fuller that, "Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable." The goal of the show is to expose the unseen and overlooked aspects of design, architecture, and activity in the world. Each episode generally focuses on a single topic or specific example of design, often including interviews with architects, experts, or people who have influenced or been influenced by a given urban, industrial, graphic or other design.

Elwood Edwards is an American voice actor. He is best known as the voice of the Internet service provider America Online, which he first recorded in 1989.

Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine is a weekly, comedic medical podcast hosted by Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband, podcaster Justin McElroy. The show is distributed online by Maximum Fun.

My Brother, My Brother and Me is a weekly comedy advice podcast distributed by the Maximum Fun network and hosted by brothers Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy. Regular episodes of the podcast feature the brothers comedically providing answers to questions either submitted by listeners or found online.

The Adventure Zone is a weekly comedy and adventure actual play podcast based loosely upon the Dungeons & Dragons game series, along with other role-playing games. The show is distributed by the Maximum Fun network and hosted by brothers Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy, and their father Clint McElroy. Regular episodes of the podcast feature the family solving puzzles, fighting enemies, and leveling up their characters in a series of cinematic and humorous encounters.

Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine is a weekly, comedic medical podcast hosted by Dr. Sydnee McElroy and her husband, podcaster Justin McElroy. The show is distributed online by Maximum Fun.

In each episode, Sydnee discusses an element of historical medical practice, while Justin provides a comedic foil. The show normally focuses on antiquated medical practices that are unusual to modern listeners, but occasionally covers rare and unusual disorders and occurrences.

Sydnee and Justin McElroy had previously worked together on a short podcast series entitled Losing the Sheen, focused on watching Two and a Half Men. The show only lasted nine episodes before the two became tired of it, instead starting a medical podcast based on Sydnee's expertise. While developing the idea for the show, the McElroys decided that it would be irresponsible for them to give medical advice to listeners, even with Sydnee's background. They opted instead to focus on the historical aspects, which had been an interest of Sydnee's. Like other shows by the family, such as My Brother, My Brother and Me, Sawbones is distributed via the Maximum Fun network.