Real Life:

This week's episode kicks off with Ben wondering what would happen if idioms were costumes. Imagine showing up to a party literally raining cats and dogs or dressed as the elephant in the room. (We're not sure if that's genius or horrifying.)

Steven reminds everyone to say it to our faces! — meaning, drop us a comment or suggestion. Seriously. We read them. Sometimes we even respond like civilized humans.

Devon went to a Halloween party with the Non-Religious Alliance of East Texas Facebook group (yes, that's a thing), rocking a DS9 uniform costume that probably had at least three pips too many.

Ben got a night off parenting duties for Kids Night Out and wants to shout out Butterchurn Visualizer for turning his playlist into a full-blown psychedelic light show.

Then Steven dives into a spoiler-filled review of Sinners — which Devon also saw. If you haven't watched it yet, consider this your warning: spoilers abound, and apparently so do opinions.

Future or Now

Devon takes us up to near space with the week's wildest headline: the object that struck a United Airlines plane wasn't space debris… it was a weather balloon.
Turns out, flight 1093's busted front window was courtesy of one of humanity's oldest sky spies, not falling junk from orbit.
📰 Read more here: Ars Technica

Meanwhile, Ben is fed up with the internet's ad problem — you know, those "No Adblocker Detected" pop-ups that ruin your vibe. He found a fantastic rant about how ad-driven web economics are slowly melting the internet into a soulless sludge of clickbait and autoplay. Check it out here: Maurycyz.com on Internet Ads.

As for Steven, he contributed… absolutely nothing. His words, not ours.

📚 Book Club: "Planet Lion" by Catherynne M. Valente 📚

This week, the crew explored the lush and poetic alien world of Planet Lion by Catherynne M. Valente (read it here).

• Ben didn't love the poetic style but admits he might've shortchanged the story by listening instead of reading — multitasking strikes again.

• Devon really enjoyed it, especially the layered, lyrical tone.

• Steven appreciated how alien the alien perspective felt — not just in design, but in mindset.

Next week's story: "The Game of Smash and Recovery" by Kelly Link (available here).

As always — got thoughts, theories, or strong feelings about weather balloons or weird fiction? Say it to our faces! Drop a comment or join the discussion on our socials.

Real Life

Ben was out this week, which left Devon and Steven to hold court—and as Devon reminded us, there are no kings here anyway. He showed up fresh from an event that apparently involved an axolotl costume (details were scarce, which somehow made it funnier), and immediately launched into a whirlwind of thoughts about upcoming elections, funding cuts to science, and the strange, ongoing collision between South Park and real-world politics.

Meanwhile, Steven spent his weekend in the world of The Witcher: The Old World board game with Greg, slaying monsters, collecting trophies, and occasionally remembering to play the objective. Devon also caught up on Foundation Season 3, where he's decided Brother Day now fully channels The Dude—if The Dude had an empire and a god complex.

Future or Now

Devon took us on a deep dive into the evolving shape of human unhappiness. Once upon a time, midlife was the low point—a universal "unhappiness hump." But according to new global data, that hump is flattening out. Today, mental health is worst in youth and actually improves with age. The midlife crisis may be over, but something worse has taken its place: an age of early despair. Young people are struggling more than ever before, reshaping how we think about happiness across the lifespan.
👉 Read more

Steven followed that up with a warning: don't drink the Kool-Aid—or the soda. A massive new study of over 120,000 people found that both regular and diet soft drinks are hammering our liver health. The risk of metabolic-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) jumps dramatically with more than one can a day—and "diet" drinks might actually be worse. Changes to gut bacteria and appetite regulation are the prime suspects.
👉 Check out the study

Book Club

No story discussion this week, but next time we're diving into Planet Lion by Catherynne M. Valente, a luminous piece of speculative fiction about faith, communication, and the limits of understanding alien minds.

👉 Read it on Uncanny Magazine

It's another week in real life for the gang — or at least for most of us. Devon's down sick, so it's a two-man show featuring Steven and Ben navigating the bizarre crossroads of tech, food, and VR golf.

Ben's been tethered to the job, but he still managed to escape reality long enough to join a virtual round of Walkabout Mini Golf— specifically the new Tokyo DLC — alongside Steven, some friends, and one of our lovely patrons. Turns out, there's nothing quite like bonding over missed putts in low-poly Japan.

Meanwhile, Steven's week has been aggressively autumnal. Between a pumpkin painting and apple party (new listeners, it's a thing), setting up a a pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi 4, and cracking open the Hellboy board game, he's officially living his best nerd life.

Ben, on the other hand, declared war on Microsoft. With Windows 10 heading toward its end-of-life, he's switched to Bazzite Linux to avoid the sins of Windows 11. Cue righteous fury: "How dare you do what you do, Microsoft?" Also, the ROG Ally handheld PC is on the horizon — should we be excited or just emotionally prepared?

Steven dives into a story that'll make you rethink that bag of chips: ultra-processed foods (UPFs) now dominate the American diet — and they're linked to chronic inflammation, heart disease, and cancer. According to Science Daily, people who eat the most UPFs show higher levels of hs-CRP, an inflammation marker. The takeaway? Maybe listen when Steven yells, "What's in your mouth?! DROP IT!"

Ben, ever the tech romantic, went down a rabbit hole about creating your own physical music formats — a nostalgic rebellion against the streaming void. Inspired by this Y Combinator post, he mourns the lost art of DropMix and Rock Band, both now relics of a time when music and play collided beautifully.

This week we read "Wikihistory" by Desmond Warzel — a time-travel tale told entirely through wiki edit threads. It's short, it's clever, and it'll make you question what's really editable in history.

Next week: "Planet Lion" by Catherynne M. Valente — an elegant, surreal journey through alien communication and memory.

👾 Listen now for the perfect mix of VR golf, processed snacks, Linux rebellion, and speculative fiction.
🎧 Available wherever you get your podcasts.

Real Life

Ben's decided that fall is… fine. Just okay. Leaves fall, pumpkin spice happens, and he moves on. His energy's better spent testing out new hands-free necklace cameras—a totally normal sentence—and keeping Orion fed and happy.

Meanwhile, Steven dove headfirst into Shadow of the Demon Lord, playing Velmar the Archivist, a character with a flair for ancient lore and possibly poor life decisions. Five hours later, the table survived, the dice were appeased, and Steven was still buzzing from the chaos.

Devon, fresh from his cruise survival, gave us tales of ice skating, laser tag, and kid karaoke—the real high seas adventure. The boat did, however, dock somewhere that was apparently not Devon-approved. We didn't ask for details. Some horrors are best left off-mic.

Ben's also been deep-diving into retro TV, revisiting Police Squad! after catching the fourth Naked Gun movie. Add in Marvel Zombies—a wild, tragic, and completely zany series that gave him Batman Ninja flashbacks—and you've got Ben's viewing habits perfectly summarized: somewhere between slapstick and existential decay.

Marvel Zombies on IMDb

Review on The Playlist

Steven's been championing Peacemaker, wrapping up season 1 and binging through the first seven episodes of season 2. He gives it a full-hearted recommendation—especially if you enjoy Superman references, alternate realities, and 80s glam metal in your superhero chaos.

Devon, ever the connoisseur, dropped a bombshell: there's a new Simpsons movie coming, and it might even be replacing a Marvel release slot. He's cautiously thrilled. On the flip side, Alien: Earth got a collective "eh" from the group—though we all agreed its many storylines and editing quirks made for an interesting dissection.

Future or Now
We didn't make it here this week. Too many good tangents.

Book Club

This week's read was "They're Made Out of Meat" by Terry Bisson—short, weird, and surprisingly heartfelt. The crew praised its simple but sharp worldbuilding-through-dialogue, and Ben compared its absurd tone to Ren & Stimpy's close-up madness. For a kid-friendlier vibe, he also recommended The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.

Read "They're Made Out of Meat"

Watch the short film adaptation

Flapjack on IMDb

Next week's story: "Wikihistory" by Desmond Warzel, a time-travel tale told through forum posts.
Read it here

Want more weird science, deep-cut book talk, and bonus chaos?
Join us on Patreon for unedited episodes, exclusive content, and our private Discord full of bad jokes and good vibes. Your support keeps the mics hot and the fall season just a little less "okay."

Devon's not here this week—he ditched us for a cruise. Apparently, some doctors say cruises are floating petri dishes with barely any oversight on cleanliness. But not our Devon. He's braving the high seas while Steven sits at home thinking, "You know what sounds better than hundreds of strangers sneezing near me? Literally anything else."

Meanwhile, Ben went to the Gamer Festival at the Madonna Inn, which looked like an absolute blast. Arcade machines, board games, and maybe too many people in themed t-shirts. He even stumbled across a longplay video of Stargate (Arcade) on YouTube (22K views after three years!) and got into Broom Service, a trick-taking board game where witches zoom around delivering potions. Rules here if you're curious.

Steven, instead of heading to Gamer Fest, ran a Mutant Crawl Classics session. Mutants, post-apocalyptic chaos, dice rolling—it was all there. When he wasn't GMing, he was kit-bashing his own mini robot out of spare parts. Award-winning, five-star author and robot builder? Yeah, he's got range.

Normally, this is where we'd slide into our Future or Now segment—but with Devon off the grid (and possibly fighting buffet lines instead of time-travel paradoxes), we skipped it this week. Don't worry, it'll be back once he's done living the boat life.

We also touched on:

• A correction about Star Trek: Khan (there are 9 episodes, not 3—we messed that up).

• Parking Garage Rally Circuit, a Sega Saturn-inspired rally racer on Steam. It's got ska, it's got cars, and the holophonic audio makes you feel like you're back in 1994. Check it out here.

• Rick and Morty Season 8, and the eternal question: which episode was the best?

This week:
We read Robert Silverberg's 1971 short story "Good News from the Vatican." It's all about the election of the first robot pope, and yes, it's as wild as it sounds. You can find it in Universe 1 or snag it here on Kindle

Next week:
We're tackling Terry Bisson's "They're Made Out of Meat"—a classic piece of weird short fiction that asks: what if humans are just slabs of meat trying to talk? Read it here or watch this short adaptation.

This week's episode covers everything from Metallica rumors to vehicular combat nostalgia, with some Star Trek overload and a short story about ants the size of Buicks.

First off: is Metallica doing a farewell tour? Nope. Despite the headlines , it's not the end. Devon's floating the idea of a Metallica Vegas residency though—because nothing says "hard rock" like the Strip buffet scene.

Speaking of trips, Devon cruised back to Cozumel and reported in with the most lukewarm Superman review ever: "It was okay." Much more enthusiasm went to Twisted Metal, which Devon swears is actually good TV.

Ben's week was a mash-up of retro and weird: revisiting the vehicular combat classic Vigilante 8 (alternate 1975, naturally) and driving headlong into Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom—a game best described as Super Mario 64 colliding with Crazy Taxi in an alleyway.

Steven had a great run in Shatterpoint, squaring off against Greg. Steven fielded Lord Maul and Count Dooku, Greg ran the entire Rogue One crew, and fun was had by all.

Also, Ben dog-sat and chicken-sat for Steven. His payment? Eggs. A true barter economy.

Ben wasn't going to let us off the hook without some Star Trek chatter. Two new official Trek series just dropped—including Star Trek: Scouts, a preschooler show that Ben insists counts. He's also tossing out theories about Jack Ransom connections and reminding us that Khan is on the way too. That's… a lot of Trek. Maybe too much Trek.

Steven meanwhile is hyped because Star Trek LEGO,

is now officially a thing. The USS Enterprise and a Type-15 Shuttlepod in brick form? Yes, please.

Devon had nothing this week. (Hey, he's allowed a bye week.)

This week we dug into Edward Bryant's 1979 short story giANTS, which dives into what happens when you ignore the square-cube law. Quick refresher: double the size of an insect, and its mass increases faster than its strength or breathing ability. Meaning giant ants would basically suffocate under their own bulk. Science ruins everything, but at least it makes for great fiction.

Next week we're jumping back to 1971 with Robert Silverberg's Good News from the Vatican (found in Universe 1). Grab it here, if you want to read along.

This week's episode was a ride through everything from neighborhood drama to yogurt overlords, with plenty of science and sci-fi sprinkled along the way.

Ben kicked things off with Five Nights at Freddy's—because apparently, jump scares are just how he likes to unwind. From there, he veered into a wild story involving a crossing guard, a flag man, and threats from a community member that had us questioning if this was real life or the start of a low-budget thriller.

Devon had politics on his mind (as he often does), and let's just say it was… cathartic.

Steven closed his section with a review of Mickey 17 (yes, the Bong Joon-ho movie starring Robert Pattinson), finally finishing Rick & Morty, and then going deep into the concept of an Alien Earth.

Meanwhile, Ben reminded everyone to get your COVID booster while you still can. His advice? If you need to, just say you have asthma. "Who's gonna check?" he asked. (Don't tempt fate, Ben.)

Ben brought us back to his favorite corner of the internet: The Weird Wide Web. This time he found:

• A Pigeon Hadron Collider (yes, it exists),

• Computer shoes (also real, somehow),

• And a store that generates anything you type (Hacker News link here)

Devon turned things more serious with some big Mars news. NASA's Perseverance rover collected a sample called Sapphire Canyon from an ancient riverbed, and it could preserve evidence of ancient microbial life. NASA's announcement and the coverage highlight the discovery's potential—though, as Devon pointed out, politicians are already trying to spin credit in ways that don't hold up.

Steven brought us back to Earth (sort of) with the rise of Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs. Harvard Health explains how they work, while a new RAND report, shows nearly 12% of Americans have already tried them. Effective? Yes. Side effects? Also yes.

This week we read "When the Yogurt Took Over" by John Scalzi (link here), which you may know from its animated adaptation in Love, Death & Robots. Short, weird, and oddly plausible—because if dairy products do overthrow humanity, it's probably our fault.

Next week: we're tackling Edward Bryant's "giANTS" (1979), which you can find here. Prepare yourself for some very big bugs.

Devon also dropped some knowledge about Sean Carroll's The Particle at the End of the Universe, tying our sci-fi chat back to real physics.

That's the roundup! Between pigeons smashing atoms, yogurt world domination, and Mars microbes, it was one of those episodes where the line between real science and sci-fi got blurry—and we loved every minute of it.

This week's episode is stacked—like a plate at Boar & Barley (Ben barely survived, oh God). Speaking of Milwaukee, Devon had some things to say, and Steven dove into Rick and Morty season 8 on HBO—has the quality shifted? Plus, Marvel's Thunderbolts snuck its way into the convo.

Devon brought us back to the Bob-verse world with Dennis E. Taylor's Flybot. He called it "enjoyable" (which is Devon for a glowing review). Near-future tech, asteroid mining, eco-terrorists, and a scrappy AI robot pieced together from spare parts—this one's a cozy puzzle-box of sci-fi. We also asked: is this "Casual Sci-Fi"? "Cozy Sci-Fi"? Someone trademark that.

Ben, meanwhile, shouted "Star Trek? Hell yeah, brother" and broke down Noah Hawley's almost-made Star Trek film that would've tied directly into The Next Generation. Read more here.

Steven brought his A-game with Alien: Earth episode 5—he swears it's the best Alien movie in a long time. High praise.

Patron Renee joined us! She told us about her latest comic-con adventures and stuck with us for the whole episode (you love to see it).

This week we read "Bears Discover Fire" by Terry Bisson—a story that scooped up basically all the awards back in the early '90s (Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Locus, Asimov's Readers, you name it). It feels like something straight out of Haruki Murakami—quiet, strange, and deeply human. Oh, and yes, we did wonder aloud: what if it was Banthas Discover Fire?

📖 Read it here: Lightspeed Magazine
🎬 DUST adaptation: Watch on YouTube
🎧 Audiobook: Listen here

Next week: "When the Yogurt Took Over" by John Scalzi (which also got the Love, Death + Robots treatment). Check it out here.