[// Pregenerate link to episode ahead of time: - clicktotweet.com- sharelinkgenerator.com]: # This week's episode is gr-r-reat, probably because we can see why kids love the swirl of Nicks in every bit of this week's episode... on Breakfast Cereal fans! Next week, we'll have special guest friend, [EFG Nick](http://www.epicfilmguys.com/), to talk about fans of fad foods! ## Episode outline ### Fandom Facts **History and Origins:** Breakfast cereal is a type of food, often made of grains and eaten as the first meal of the day (in Western society, at least). Cereals are often fortified with vitamins, lack the vitamins needed for a healthy breakfast, _and_ are often high in sugar. In 1970, there were only 160 different kinds of cereal in the US; in 2012, there were almost 5000. [//Apparently, breakfast cereal has profit margins of 40-50%? That's a lot ]: # Breakfast cereal actually shares its history _way_ back with indigenous North Americans who had found a way to make ground corn palatable (later, called "grits" or "hominy")... though it never gained a foothold in the northern US. Apparently, there was a group of food reformers who wanted to cut back on excessive meat consumption at breakfast (including Seventh-day Adventists, who made the food reforms part of their religion). Flash forward a bit to the end of the 19th century with a certain John Harvey Kellogg, son of an Adventist factory owner, medical superintendent, _and_ masturbation rehabilitator. The institute he worked at often had wealthy industrialists visit for recuperation and they were accustomed to egg, ham, sausage, fried potatoes, coffee... and so on; at the facility, they found abstinence and a vegetarian diet. Kellogg experimented with granola, which eventually lead to Cornflakes, the archetypical breakfast cereal. ...
We arrive in Italy, and rather than diving into a fandom, we dive into a history lesson on Italy, Progressive Rock, and its liberating love child, Rock Progressivo Italiano (RPI)! What is it? How is it different than prog rock in general? Why is its own subgenre? Some of these, an more, on this week's episode! Next week, we'll be travelling to Turkey to talk about fans of that delicious dark beverage, coffee! ## Episode outline ### Fandom Facts **Origins:** Progressive Rock (prog rock) is a subgenre of rock music developed in the UK and US throughout the mid to late 1960s (initially termed progressive pop). It is based on a fusion of styles and is an outgrowth of psychedelic bands who moved away from pop tradition in favour of different instrumentation an compositional techniques more often found in jazz, folk, or classical music. Rock Progressivo Italiano (RPI) is a subgenre within a subgenre. Italy was generally uninterested in rock music _until_ the early 1970s when the italian prog rock scene developed. RPI is notable as it tends to emphasize the classical rather than rock elements of the music, often including some operatic influences. **Most Active:** The fandom was definitely more active towards the inception of the subgenre. In terms of [Google Trends](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=Rock%20Progressivo%20Italiano,Prog%20Rock) data, search interest is quite low (with the most interest taking place in July 2004). Interest in RPI is also significantly less than prog rock (which is not in decline by comparison; interest in prog rock is mostly flat). There is not enough data to determine any particular regionalism, but one might expect that it is popular in... Italy. **Related fandoms:** Prog Rock. ### [Last Episode's](http://fanthropological.com/e/38-arsene-lupin-fans/) Famous Last Words **Z:** Are all of the prog rock bands in Italy ...
This week, we're batting our best and bowling for the fences as we talk about fans of that popular English sport, Cricket! Why is it so popular? Is it really as slow as they say? Stay tuned! Next week, there'll be less qq and more pew-pew when we dive into fans of StarCraft! ## Episode outline ### Fandom Facts **Origins:** Cricket is in some ways, not dissimilar from more familiar (to North Americans) sports such as baseball: > Cricket is a ... played between two teams of eleven players each on a cricket field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard-long pitch with a target called the wicket (a set of three wooden stumps topped by two bails) at each end. Each phase of play is called an innings during which one team bats, attempting to score as many runs as possible, whilst their opponents field. Depending on the type of match, the teams have one or two innings apiece and, when the first innings ends, the teams swap roles for the next innings. > > — [Wikipedia - Cricket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket) It is unclear when the sport began, but it is likely to have started around the middle of the 16th century and the first international matches took place in the second half of the 19th century (with the sport having grown globally as part of the expansion of the British Empire). Interestingly enough, the first international match took place between the United States and Canada (of all places) in 1844. **Most Active:** Unlike many recent fandoms we're explored, interest in cricket seems to be increasing! [Google Trends](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=%2Fm%2F09xp_,%2Fm%2F018jz) indicates a slow increase in interest in the sport since 2004, with a few spikes recently corresponding to the Cricket ...
