The Incomparable

825 3D Printing With Xenon

What if “The Martian” but with an alien buddy? We break down “Project Hail Mary,” and marvel at what a good translation of a sort-of-unfilmable book it really is! Why do we love alien puppets so much? Why is Jason checking his watch at the end? We give this movie a thumbs down—by which we mean we liked it! Amaze amaze amaze!

824 The Most Movie

Get out your PowerBooks and prepare to punch an alien in patriotic fashion! We celebrate Independence Day with a 30-year-old film, “Independence Day”! It’s a lot of movie. Is Jason ready to forgive it?

823 Someone on Both Sides of the Gunfight

We combine our love of “Star Trek” with the appreciation for old movies that can only be provided by our sister podcast Lions, Towers, and Shields, by drafting “Star Trek” actors (TOS and TNG only) and the movie roles we loved before they appeared on Star Trek!

And be sure to listen to this summer’s LTS’s Star Trek summer event.

822 Jacket Into Cyberspace

William Gibson Book Club reconvenes to close out the legendary Sprawl trilogy with “Mona Lisa Overdrive,” a book in which there are lots of vibes from a lot of people who are secondary characters in a story being driven by an AI that we never really meet. Robot art projects! Many overlapping jackets, none of them the same size! And a car ride to… the future?! We break it all down.

821 Historic Parking Garage

Get behind your typewriters! Old Movie Club follows the money to discuss 1976’s “All The President’s Men,” in which the power of dogged reportage and journalistic freedom triumphs over the banality of evil.

820 I Can Read It!

Our survey of award-nominated novels rolls on with “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter,” “When We Were Real,” and “Sour Cherry.” Not gonna lie: we’re struggling with the reading a bit this year. But at least one of these novels threw us a lifeline.

819 All the Babus Frik

We went out to the movies to see “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” the first “Star Wars” film this decade. We had a really good time, thanks in large part to the charisma of many different puppets. (This is “Star Wars,” after all.) We aren’t without our criticisms—Is there ever really any danger? What is Sigourney Weaver doing?—but all in all, this film filled a Star Wars-shaped hole in our hearts.

818 Ferris is Magic

Let’s travel 40 years back in time, to Chicago in 1986, where on one legendary day, a high school student named Ferris Bueller bends time and space, all in service of cheering up his best friend. We break down what makes “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” still work after all these years.

817 A Found Family of Monsters

Awards Book Club reconvenes for 2026, as we discuss Nebula-nominated novels “Katabasis” by R.F. Kuang, “Wearing the Lion” by John Wiswell, and “Death of the Author” by Nnedi Okorafor. The mood of the panel is… cautious. Also: What else are we reading?

816 Fascism for Algernon

Put on your eye phones and jack in to the cyberscape! Rocket Surgery comes for 1996’s cyberpunk epic “Lawnmower Man 2.” (Don’t worry if you haven’t seen the original “Lawnmower Man,” half of us didn’t either.) Matt Frewer is Max Headrooming it up! A bunch of urchins populate a rainy L.A. that’s straight out of “Blade Runner,” but, you know—cheaper. There’s a brilliant doctor in charge of virtual-reality research, and also there’s Jennifer! And everything in the future is hackable!