FAQ

  1. Are you nuts?
    Very possibly. Actually, what I am is a professional editor and journalist who had a baby and found herself with way too much time on her hands between bouts of playing “The Itsy Bitsy Spider.” When this site launched, way back in 2003, it was just me transcribing episodes in my living room with a sleeping infant on my lap. As I write this update in 2023, I have actual minions working for me—Sean Marten helps me out on the site and Lynn Knott runs our fantastic Twitter feed—and my daughter is in college. My, how the time has flown by.
  2. How come you didn’t include every joke in the episodes?
    There is nothing more grindingly unfunny than attempting to explain a joke. “Annotated” means we only explain those things that need explaining. We're particularly interested in cultural references—movies, books, historical events, etc.—although we've also noted references to other MST episodes where they occur.
  3. Where did you get all your information?
    On the Internet, of course. Where possible, we try to go with reliable and authoritative sources: the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Internet Movie Database, and so forth. Where this is not possible, we attempt to corroborate the explanation with two independent sources. Where that is not possible, we wing it. This isn’t brain surgery.
  4. Hey! My favorite episode isn’t in here! What gives?
    Patience, my pet. We’ll get to it eventually. However, we do take requests, so if there’s a particular episode you’re dying to see annotated, drop us a line and we’ll see what we can do.
  5. I know for a fact your explanation of this joke is wrong. What are you going to do about it?
    It’s inevitable that we will make mistakes in these guides. If you find an error or a reference we've overlooked, send us an email with the correct explanation. Please include your source for the information. If we can confirm it, we’ll make the change and credit you on the site.

Thanks for reading, and enjoy the site!

Wyn Hilty

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