Episode 593: The Horse Cannot Be Contained
Science Faction Podcast
This week we cover a little bit of everything, including a brutal browser puzzle game, new tabletop RPG pickups, meditation meetups, comic books, and a short film with a great twist. REAL LIFE Ben kicks things off talking about the puzzle game that has completely taken over his brain, Enclose the Horse (). The goal is simple but cruel: build the biggest possible enclosure using limited walls, while the horse avoids water, ignores diagonal movement, and sometimes teleports through portals. Steven shares some new tabletop RPG pickups including Orbital Blues from and Star Borg by , plus updates...
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Episode 592: A Vertiginous Experience
Science Faction Podcast
Real Life Ben opens the show by talking about vertigo—both experiencing it firsthand and wondering if Devon might be dealing with it too. He shares that he was diagnosed with a mild case and offers genuinely useful advice: if you’re experiencing vertigo, see a doctor, figure out what caused it, and which side it’s affecting. In some cases, it can be an easy fix, which is reassuring for something that can feel pretty alarming. Steven checks in with some family time, talking about Perils & Princesses and enjoying it as a group activity. Devon, meanwhile, is riding the simple but...
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Episode 591: Oral Frailties
Science Faction Podcast
Real Life We kick things off with a round of Real Life check-ins, because apparently none of us are allowed to simply exist quietly. Ben opens with Bedroom Talk with Ben Lawless, which is exactly as awkward, candid, and vaguely alarming as it sounds. No further clarification is offered, nor requested. Devon reports that snowboarding with his kids was actually great. No injuries, no disasters—just genuine fun on the mountain, which frankly feels suspicious but we’ll allow it. He also shares that he’s been practicing guitar for an hour a day, really locking in on technique. That means...
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Episode 590: The Christmas Fallout
Science Faction Podcast
Real Life This week’s episode starts where a lot of us have been living lately: sick, tired, and mainlining comfort food. Steven is still sick for Christmas and counting, while Ben also got hit, which pushed Christmas celebrations down the calendar a bit. The upside? More chili. More Fritos. No regrets. Holiday illness also turned into a surprisingly serious soda tasting panel. Steven gives a strong thumbs-up to Sunset Sarsaparilla, while Nuka Cola Quantum lands squarely in the “fine, I guess” category. Ben, meanwhile, makes a passionate case for Canada Dry Fruit Splash Cherry Ginger...
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Episode 589: They Still Make These Films?
Science Faction Podcast
This week’s episode is a little different—Steven is out sick, so it’s just Devon and Ben holding down the fort. The result is a loose, thoughtful conversation that bounces from pop culture overload to philosophy, creativity, and the art of not trying so hard. Real Life Devon kicks things off with a trip looming on the horizon, bringing equal parts snow, stress, and snowboarding. That spirals nicely into media consumption: thoughts on Switch 2, Mario Maker 2, and catching up on a new Wes Anderson film alongside a Knives Out rewatch. Cozy movies, big style, and just enough...
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Episode 588: Ben-nip and the Non-troversy
Science Faction Podcast
Real Life We kick things off with Real Life, where Devon is suspiciously chipper and ahead on billing (don’t worry, it doesn’t last forever). Steven recounts The Great Lice Infestation of ’25, a saga that will echo through the ages—or at least the household laundry room. Ben crowns Sektori as his game of the year, describing it as the best Dreamcast game that never existed and somehow got a remaster. If that sentence alone sells you, here’s the deal-tracking rabbit hole via . Bennnip. Steven also recommends Arc Raiders, a loot-em-up that caught his attention, which leads to a...
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Episode 587: Birthday Overload Apocalypse
Science Faction Podcast
Real Life We opened this week’s episode with real-life updates, starting with Steven’s full-on birthday blitz — his birthday, his kids’ birthdays, all packed into the same window. There was dinner out, a rowdy round of Ransom Notes, and the proud report that his kid nailed a fully successful sleepover. Parenting achievement unlocked. Devon, meanwhile, came in questioning reality: The Onion is still a newspaper? That somehow turned into a whole debate about debates (1 vs. 20 participants), which feels about right. And then his kid dropped the big question at home: how do we stop an...
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Episode 586: Space Clinics & Wartime Critters
Science Faction Podcast
Thanksgiving came and went, and somehow all three of us survived… though some of us survived more deviled eggs than others. Let’s jump in. Real Life Steven kicked things off with the tale of a very boring Thanksgiving that was only made notable by the sheer volume of deviled eggs involved. When you commit to making 36 eggs—times two—you’re basically catering your own side quest. After recovering, he cleansed his palate by watching Jurassic Park with his kid, which is exactly the kind of comfort cinema the holiday demands. Ben had a more people-filled holiday: his mom visited...
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Episode 585: Pass the Physics, Hold the Simulation
Science Faction Podcast
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. Real Life 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...
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Episode 584: Inheriting the Atom Bomb
Science Faction Podcast
This Week on the Pod: Rain, Parades, Hive Minds, and… Ben’s Brain for Rent? 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,...
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We opened this week’s episode with real-life updates, starting with Steven’s full-on birthday blitz — his birthday, his kids’ birthdays, all packed into the same window. There was dinner out, a rowdy round of Ransom Notes, and the proud report that his kid nailed a fully successful sleepover. Parenting achievement unlocked.
Devon, meanwhile, came in questioning reality: The Onion is still a newspaper? That somehow turned into a whole debate about debates (1 vs. 20 participants), which feels about right. And then his kid dropped the big question at home: how do we stop an asteroid from hitting Earth? Devon chose the only responsible answer: we “Armageddon” it.
Ben ended up on a binge of Home Alone and Hawkeye, which is a surprisingly coherent double feature when you think about it.
Future or Now
Steven: Why ’90s Brains Are Built Differently
Steven brought a pair of articles that explore why ’90s kids’ brains diverged from Gen Z’s: a piece from Psychology Zine (link) and a supporting breakdown from Newsweek (link).
If you grew up racing Rainbow Road in Mario Kart or discovering secrets in Pokémon Red without a guidebook, you remember when games came in chunky cartridges, had clear endings, and handed out failure like candy. You got better, or you started over. That era hard-coded a very different reward system.
Compare that to now: kids juggling Fortnite battle passes, chasing Roblox skins with real money, and fending off constant push notifications baiting FOMO. According to the experts in those articles, this shift isn’t just technological — it’s actually altering how developing brains handle challenge, reward, and attention.
Devon: Can We Finally Trust Quantum Computers?
Devon dug into a fascinating breakthrough in quantum computing. Scientists have developed a method that can validate results from quantum computers in minutes instead of millennia. The report came from ScienceDaily (link) and the deeper technical writeup appeared in Quantum Science and Technology (IOP link).
Right now, quantum devices — especially GBS machines — are notoriously noisy, and verifying their answers is so computationally hard that we usually just trust whatever they spit out. This new technique already exposed errors in a major earlier experiment, which is both alarming and encouraging. If we want reliable quantum hardware, this is exactly the step we needed.
Ben: Giants on the Icelandic Landscape
Ben found something visually stunning: a design project that turns routine electrical pylons into towering human-shaped sculptures across Iceland. They’re eerie, monumental, and beautiful in a way infrastructure never gets to be. You can see the concept on the designer’s site here: choishine.com (link).
These pylon-giants use only minor structural tweaks to standard tower design, but the transformation is dramatic. Instead of anonymous metal frames, the landscape gets colossal steel figures marching across the horizon.
Book Club
This Week: “Dark Air” by Lincoln Michel
We read “Dark Air” this week — a moody, unsettling story that mixes environmental dread with strange atmospheric phenomena. You can read it for free on Granta:
granta.com/dark-air
Next Week: “The Red Thread” by Sofia Samatar
Next up is Sofia Samatar’s “The Red Thread” — intricate, mythic, and exactly the kind of story we love diving into. You can read it on Lightspeed Magazine:
lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-red-thread