It's a big week over here, full of visiting parents, cosmic philosophy, and at least one host wrestling with the concept of leftovers. Let's get into it.

Ben is officially in pre-Thanksgiving hype mode because his mom is coming to visit (hi Martha!). There may or may not be a traditional Thanksgiving dinner on the table—Ben is thinking about it, which is basically the same as committing, right? He's also deep into a full-spectrum Percy Jackson immersion program: watching the movie, reading the books, and watching the new show. You can check out the show's current score here:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/percy_jackson_and_the_olympians

This leads into Ben's latest tech spiral: trying to explain Valve to explain Steam to explain their new announcements. Yes, we're talking Steam Machine, Steam Frame, Steam Controller… all the greatest hits of "Valve makes hardware for some reason."

Devon is dealing with some extended-family logistics involving his sister-in-law and also took a firm stance this week: he hates Thanksgiving atmosphere. The vibes? Bad. The leftovers? Worse. Respect the honesty.

Steven stayed indoors and educated himself by way of extremely good YouTube movie documentaries. First up: a look at how Jurassic Park pulled off its groundbreaking effects:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWtlIhVDl-M

And then a deep dive into the behind-the-scenes of Interstellar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iH6qRaOr8YY

Not a bad way to spend a weekend.

Devon brings us the most brain-melting story of the week: physicists have now mathematically proven that the Universe is not a simulation.

A team from UBC Okanagan used Gödel's incompleteness theorem to demonstrate that reality requires a form of "non-algorithmic understanding"—something that no computational system can replicate. In other words: if this is a simulation, it's not one any computer could run.

Read the research summary here:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251110021052.htm

So the Universe might be fundamentally unsimulatable. Which is cool, unless you were really hoping to blame your life choices on a bored cosmic programmer.

We're jumping into a choose-your-own-adventure-style sci-fi story with "Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station" by Caroline M. Yoachim. It's weird, funny, sharply written, and perfect for discussion.
Read it here:
https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/welcome-to-the-medical-clinic-at-the-interplanetary-relay-station/

We're covering "City Grown From Seed" by Diana Dima.
Content warning: domestic violence / domestic abuse.

This one is dense, metaphorical, unsettling, and beautifully written. It explores generational trauma, identity, and rebirth through surreal botanical imagery. Definitely one of those stories that sticks with you long after reading.
Find it here:
http://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/fiction/city-grown-from-seed/

This week's episode opens with a very rainy round of real-life updates. Ben has been slammed with work and declares—formally, officially, irrevocably—that poetry is better than parades. (He is fully prepared to defend this position.) Meanwhile, Steven reports that the local parade and festival still happened despite the rain, because sometimes community spirit just refuses to check the weather. And Devon? He keeps forgetting that he's technically a Texan now, which raises several questions about residency, identity, and barbecue obligations.

But the week wasn't all jokes—Ben also shared the sad news that Orion has passed. He was a very good boy, and the pod raises a collective toast. Ben's been spending time catching up on life, trying to relearn what "rest" even means, and also casually dropping the bomb that Affinity is now free. (Yes, really—go see for yourself at affinity.studio.) And while you're browsing, you can apparently rent Ben's actual mind at Penciledin.com, which sounds like a threat but is, in fact, a service.

Steven also let us know that the Fallout Season 2 trailer is out, so it's time to emotionally prepare for more post-apocalyptic chaos.

Devon kicks off this segment with actual real science: new research shows no clear link between acetaminophen (Tylenol) and autism, which is a big deal considering how long that concern has been floating around. (Links to ScienceDaily and the BMJ included in the show notes for the skeptics and science nerds.)

Then we collectively decide: yes, we need to talk about Plur1bus. And we go deep.

This is a full-spoiler discussion, so skip ahead if you're still watching. We cover everything—from the protagonist who's also the antagonist, to the messy moral math of a hive mind, to Devon's incredibly passionate speech about wanting to understand hive-mind psychology. Steven brings up that Internet-as-proto-hivemind theory, and Ben drops several very good points as per tradition.

If you want episode breakdowns, the Wikipedia page has everything laid out neatly and also serves as a reminder that this show is way smarter than any of us expected when we hit "play."

We skipped Book Club this week because there was simply too much Plur1bus to process.

Next week:
We're reading City Grown From Seed by Diana Dima.
Content warning: domestic violence / domestic abuse.
You can read it for free on Strange Horizons.

It's another week of real life, questionable decisions, and sci-fi tangents.

Does Devon Even Like Being on the Show?
We ask the question no one dared to before—and yes, Devon does like being here. Just… maybe not for the reasons you think.

Ben's Apology Tour Continues
Ben kicks things off with an immediate apology for this podcast. Again. But he makes up for it by diving into Apple TV's The Big Door Prize (IMDb link)—a show full of mysteries, midlife crises, and a machine that tells you your true potential. He's also been watching Zen for Nothing and Piece by Piece, and we learn something shocking: Steven hates LEGO.

Steven's Space Drama
Speaking of Steven, he's wrestling with another defeat in Shatterpoint (at the hands of Christina's husband, again), and somehow this leads to him buying a Camtono. Why does he have one? No one knows. But we do get a heated debate about the LEGO Enterprise and whether Ensign Ro or Tasha Yar had the raw deal in Star Trek.

Devon's Hive-Mind Obsession
Devon's been watching Plur1bus on Apple TV and can't stop talking about how eerily well it captures collective consciousness. For a guy who insists he's an individual, he sure sounds like part of a hive.

Ben actually brings good news this time. Seriously. His pick is a hopeful piece on how Solarpunk is already happening in Africa—how communities there are skipping the outdated infrastructure of the past and heading straight into a sustainable, decentralized future. Read it here: Why Solarpunk Is Already Happening in Africa

Meanwhile, Steven turns up the heat—literally—with a wild story out of Death Valley. Scientists studying Tidestromia oblongifolia found it doesn't just survive in brutal heat—it adapts on the fly, rearranging its cells and genes to keep photosynthesizing when everything else would fry. It's a real-life lesson in evolution under pressure. (ScienceDaily link)

This Week: In the Forests of Memory by E. Lily Yu (read here) – a haunting, quiet story about memory, commerce, and humanity told through the eyes of a trader and a stranger. It's as poetic as it is unsettling.

Next Week: City Grown From Seed by Diana Dima (read here) – content warning for domestic violence and abuse. It's an eerie, metaphorical story that we'll unpack next episode.

Between Ben's apologies, Devon's hive talk, and Steven's LEGO rage, it's another week of chaos, sci-fi, and accidental enlightenment.

You can listen to the full episode wherever you get your podcasts—or watch our faces slowly melt under studio lights on YouTube.

Real Life

Time changed again. Why? Didn't we, as a society, vote on not doing this anymore? Every clock reset feels like an act of collective gaslighting.

Ben spent his week teaching classes at the Art-a-thon, where he also led a chaotic round of Werewolves featuring the now-immortal line: "I am a delicious villager." The kids apparently took that declaration at face value.

Steven was also at the Art-a-thon, diving into unfamiliar crafts (the kind that require more glue than dignity). Between Halloween, Disney runs, and too much coffee, his week sounded like a montage of exhaustion set to "Hakuna Matata."

Meanwhile, Devon escaped into Weapons—a new dark comedy-horror streaming on HBO. It's clever, weird, and surprisingly funny for something that involves, well, weapons. IMDb link here. Steven immediately brought up Good Boy—another horror film with an entirely different kind of twist. That one's here. Ben closed his week out by jumping into the Star Trek: Voyager – Across the Unknown demo, a roguelike that lets players reimagine Voyager's storylines with ship management and branching plots. It's on Steam. Boldly go, repeatedly die, try again.

Future or Now

Ben's been pondering the next phase of human-computer interaction. There are two paths, he says: cyborgs and rooms. The industry is obsessed with the former—wearables, implants, the dream of merging with our devices. But Ben argues the real frontier is communal computing: Dynamicland.

Dynamicland was a physical space in Oakland where people worked inside the computer. Tables, walls, and objects became part of a shared computational environment. Programs weren't hidden behind screens—they existed in the room with you. From 2017 until COVID, it was a place where anyone could walk in, code with their hands, and collaborate in the real world. It's computing as a public utility, like a library—but for imagination.

Meanwhile, Steven shared a video called "Giving a PC Program Control of My Muscles to Become the Fastest in the World," which feels like the opposite of communal computing. Instead of the room becoming the computer, you do. Devon called it cheating, but maybe it's just evolution—painful, electric evolution.

Book Club

This week's story was The Game of Smash and Recovery

by Kelly Link—an emotional, cryptic sci-fi tale that left the hosts divided.

Steven liked that the story existed at all, even if he couldn't quite parse it. Devon wasn't sure if he liked it—he wants narratives that make sense on the first read. Ben, meanwhile, appreciated how readable it was and actually liked the story, proving once again that literary comprehension may be inversely proportional to caffeine intake.

Next week's pick: In the Forests of Memory by E. Lily Yu.

Until then—reset your clocks, embrace communal computing, and remember: somewhere out there, a delicious villager is waiting.

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

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