Episode 577: The Robot Pope Is Real

Real Life 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? Book Club 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.