Ghost Cities, Invisible Drones, and Wormholes

Andrew Mayne and Brian Brushwood range from economics to space weirdness, starting with Malaysia’s nearly empty Forest City and what a failed megadevelopment says about speculative housing, demographic pressure, and whether abandoned infrastructure can be repurposed for art, events, or other experiments. They then dig into scams and AI-driven impersonation, arguing that the real danger is persistent social engineering built on fake relationships, and that identity verification gets much harder when business is done almost entirely through remote channels. From there they geek out over “invisible” spinning drones, massive drone shows that now rival science-fiction cityscapes, and the likelihood that outdoor entertainment will keep expanding into new forms as the tech gets cheaper. The final stretch goes full Weird Things with black holes, gravitational-wave detections, a speculative wormhole interpretation of an anomalous LIGO event, new high-resolution images of the sun, the tradeoffs of human versus robotic space exploration, and a quick detour into Spider-Man rankings before ending on creative recommendations. Picks: Brian Brushwood: Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff Brian Brushwood: Steven Pressfield and Rick Rubin talking together on Rick Rubin's podcast/YouTube interview Andrew Mayne: It Ends Andrew Mayne: The Long Beat by James Harder