Video Game Recommendations and Closing

Astronomy cast Episode seven ninety eight su,mmer our media list. Welcome to Astronomy Cast, our weekly fact based journey through the cosmos where we help you understand not only what we know but how we know what we know. I'm Professor Kane. I'm the publisher of University with Ms. Always doctor Pamela Kay, a senior scientist for the Planetary Science Instit ute and the Director of Closmo Quest. All right, Pamela, let me ask you the question. How are you? I am humid, or at least my room is humid. So are we? Oh , it's like thirty thousand percent. I mean it's, it's actually in this room eighty eight percent humidity and I had to turn the dehumidifier off to record . So yeah, we got nasty hot yesterday and then today is cloudy, but then it's like the heat turned into humidity . And so now it's just gross and sticky, but yeah, yeah, this is I mean El Nino, this is going to this is going to be a funny summer. Yeah , yeah. Although we've been having luck in terms of all the massive thunderstorms hitting the Midwest have been going north of us . So it's like the weather forecast is you're going to die, you're going to die, you're going to die. Nothing It's just wild . It isn't weather, but we have a slow rolling swarm of earthquakes on okay, yeah. Yeah. So we've got some slow slip falls. Forgetting exactly the the geology term for this it is very safe yeah yeah and we haven't felt them at all, but there are near constant earthquakes going on right now here in this sort of I don't know two to four magnitude level, but it's but they're constantly. Yeah , we have that here because of the new madress vault and place that you notice it is retaining walls built with like the bricks that stack on top of each other will just slowly start just getting shaked shaked all the time to apart. So yeah, yeah, you have to rebuild those every few years. Yeah, we don't use those we don't use bricks because of that. Your houses just explode. Like there's no point. You use timber, steel or timber. Whereas we have a brick factory in town ? Yeah , yeah . Well, we're just a couple of weeks away from summer hiatus, and so it's time to give you some homework. Here's our list of stuff we've been reading, watching, and playing. This should fill the astronomy cast shaped hole in your media landscape. We'll talk about a second, but it's time for break. What's up everyone? It's me , ASI Fud from Fun Around and Find Out. Thanks everyone for all the positivity coming out of the draft. I am so blessed to have so many people that believe in and support me, my listeners, my friends and family, and the whole Guy Go team who put my family in a commercial with me. That was so cool to see. The gecko even showed up wearing my jersey. Well, a smaller version of it, and my grandfather is a huge fan of the gecko. During my injury rehab, I was a little nervous about the future, but I've had so much support and so many people believing in me and we came through it together. I know I'm leaving the bubble of college, headed to a new city, joining a new team. It's a lot of change all at once, but I don't feel like I'm alone. The way I feel about basketball is the way I feel about life. You help your team and your team helps you. So thank you again everyone. Whether you're on the GICO team or just a fan wearing my team's jersey, thank you all so much for all the support . And we're back . All right, as we always do, and I think we've expanded it wisely to include not just the books from the summer reading list, but also the movies we've been watching, the TV shows we've been watching, the games we've been playing because we have very lopsided amounts of those various things that we consume. And so this will give us a chance to sort of cover all of our hobbies in one place . But let's start with reading. All right, because I think this is what people are hoping to hear from us. So I mean we should definitely cover some of like if you just haven't like read these, like you should read them because we recommend them every six months . And then and also some new stuff we're reading that maybe people haven't heard of. So to start with new stuff, I just read The Edge of Space Time,ic Plesartet Pory, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie by Chander Prescod Weinstein . And I made the mistake of getting this book in audio. I read audio all the time. And the reason it was a mistake is this is the kind of book that was just chock full of ideas and phrasings that I just wanted to underline . And so there's just like all these little things in it , I'm trying my desk is literally covered in post it notes from reading this book Wow And like One of my favorites was black holes are melting pots and the universe is just as complex today as it was. In the beginning , it's evolving but the complexity isn't changing. I'm paraphrasing terribly. And there's just these neat that were just slightly different ways of looking at our universe that I just want to think on. And I think the one that's going to stand with me the most is because she was talking about space and time , one of the things that came up was in the Banty language the whole to be or not to be doesn't mean quite the same thing because to them to be is both time and spatial thing . So whenever you say to be, you are defining . And I just love the implications to physics of starting from a language that has those two things intrinsically tied together. So yeah, I'm going to stop gooshing . Just go get the book, people. Go get the book, write all over it, enjoy it. And what's the book again? It is the Edge of Space Time, particles, poetry and cosmic dream boogie. It references music , it references literature. It's just good . It's by Chanda Prescode Weinstein . Yeah, and she's a tradition. I've interviewed her a couple of times and is sort of just a great sort of mix of deep axion knowledge . Your specialty is in yeah, or especially in particle physics and specifically the axion as an explanation for dark matter and then a much wider kind of science communication and cultural awareness. Yeah, absolutely great person to both interview and chat with. So I have I read a bunch, it's funny. You brought up like a nonfiction book and I've read a ton for my work and now I didn't even think to write any of them down. So I had interviewed astronauts and interviewed I interviewed Eric Berger and he did a recent sort of book about SpaceX and sort of what had happened with their with their sort of push for reusability. And it really kind of sets the modern state of where we are in reusable rocketry leading up to, but not quite sort of covering what happens with Starship , more all about the reasonability and stuff of Falcon nine. And this was the sequel . Right. Okay, so the first book that Eric Berger did was called Liftoff. And this was like the original development of SpaceX. And then the second book is reentry, which covers the reasonable phase of the of the company's development. And I think like obviously SpaceX went IPO, it is a incredibly controversial company , especially with the behavior of the CEO , but it is worth understanding company, what's going on, what their plans are, what they say their plans are versus the actions that they actually take. And Eric Berger is a wonderful kind of ambivalent journalist about the company . And so it is definitely not a fanboy coverage of it. And so I think he was terrific. So and now I'm going to talk about a fantasy series. And this is by an author named Joe Abercrombie. And he's got sort of two main series that he did. One is called The First Law, and the other one's called The Age of Madness, sort of two trilogies. And it's sort of low fantasy. So you look like Conan the Barbarian type fantasy or like old Jack Vance, which is one of my favorite fantasy authors . Really Really well written and what is really incredible about it is the characters. He is a master of telling characters and the gist is about it's kind of games of throne esque where you've got various kingdoms they're dealinging with an ongo threat and the political machinations and a threat from the North and so on. But the individual characters who kind of rise and to solve this problem are very complicated , very very shades of gray in them, you know, like one is a torturer . One is one is, you know, a veteran of countless battles who's starting to sort of have a little bit more empathy for his common man . And it's just they're so good. They're so good. And this is a recommendation from my son who 's decided this is his absolute favorite. You know, originally it was Dineman which we',re going to talk about in a second, but this is his new absolutely favorite fantasy series. So this is Joe Abercrombie , The First Law and the Age of Madness trilogies. The first book is called The Blade Itself and it, is just turtle. I've almost finished the first book and I'm just gonna be guzzling them all down. So shall we go to Dinerman? Let's talk about Dinaman. Yeah, yeah, he's he is the eight hundred pound gorilla right now consuming all media. So his dungeon qual series is the best of the books he's written. He did a, I think it was the Kaiju Surgeon before it. Do not read that unless you're willing to go to a very dark, gruesome place . It is it is going yeah, it takes you to not great places. Dungeon Crawerl Carl amaz,ing . Project Bounce House is good Haven't read Operation Bount y Bounce House . The Dungeon Crawler Carl , it exists in standard audio book full, cast audiobook which has additional content , a web tune which has yet more additional content . They're working on a role playing game that comes out in the fall. They're working on comic books with additional TV shows. Yeah, I keep freaking about the TV show. That one wasn't my star so I don't get emails. Yeah, yeah, the TV show was Seth McFarland is buying. Oh geez. So one of my favorite quotes is part of this . This is another one of those series that is going to force me to buy it in paper so I can underline and dog ear I'm bad to the books I love . But the quote is you will not break me. You can hurt me, even kill me , but you will not break me And that idea in our modern world where so many of our freedoms seem to be under threat is just so cogently expressed . And I think like the Dungeon Crawler Carl books are not high literature . You are not going to feel challenged at your core and cause you to rethink your perspectives on man's inhumanity to man . You are going to be wildly entertained with a level of ramping up stakes the likes of which you have never experienced before and you cannot believe how bonkers this book gets. And the fact that Seph McFarland is trying to turn this into a TV series. Good luck dude. Yeah, this is I don't know how some of the stuff that is covered in these books could ever turn into anything that would be practically possible on screen because it is bananas and I cannot just I can't understate how wild . Like an anime. I could see it as an anime. Yeah, yeah, your anime would work fine. But live action. But live action, I cannot I can't like how do you cover some of the things with thousands of charac ters, the set pieces that are in this, the costumes , the costumes, the special effects it would be required. It is bunkers. Incomprehensible to me that someone is going to try attemingpt to this, but good luck dude if you can, pull it off, then I'll watch it. But yeah, they're they are they are terrific. And I've I haven't read the eighth book, the eighth book that just came out. Love the first seven . Definitely listen to the audiobooks if you can if you if you because Jeff Hayes the voice actor, Jeff Hayes just does an amazing job. He's so good. He does different voices. You'll think it's a bunch of different people , but it's not. He's doing all these different voices. He is phenomenal it. m Andakes it. It just takes it to the next level. And there is a full film cast recording where Jeff does his best characters . So he's still doing Carl, he's still doing Princess Donut , he's still doing the ones that are like he defined those characters. But then some of the other ones where he's kind of me like Hata , they bring in achia is another one. Icelandic and him do not get along . So Soundbuoth Theater , the books one through four are out in full cast . That's amazing. Yeah. So yeah it's like bordering on like radio plays and stuff Yeah it's such a it's so good yeah so you really you know reading listening to his audiobook is definitely doing this and this will keep you busy all summer right,? Eight books at this point, they are, they get better and better and better . They get the stakes get higher, the set pieces get wackier, it is just and he never forgets a thing. It's true. So every single piece has a reason that gets brought into the somehow shows up every he is carting around a Chekov's dump truck worth set to go off that he then has various payoffs later on in the series. It is, yeah, it is incredible. I can't even imagine the amount of , you know, the red string spaghetti wall of connections that he's got on where however he is plotting out these books Yeah, they're absolutely great. And I think perfect summer reading . just It's is it light, it is entertaining. You will not be able to stop turning the pages. They are so good . All right, we're going to take a break and then come then deal with other meetings. Okay . What's up everyone? It's me, AZ Fud from Fun Around and F ind Out. Thanks everyone for all the positivity coming out of the draft. I am so blessed to have so many people that believe in and support me, my listeners, my friends and family, and the whole Geigo team who put my family in a commercial with me . That was so cool to see. The gecko even showed up wearing my jersey. Well, a smaller version of it, and my grandfather is a huge fan of the gecko. During my injury rehab, I was a little nervous about the future, when I've had so much support and so many people believing in me and we came through it together. I know I'm leaving the bubble of college, headed to a new city, joining a new team. It's a lot of change all at once, but I don't feel like I'm alone. The way I feel about basketball is the way I feel about life. You help your team and your team helps you. So thank you again, everyone. Whether you're on the geico team or just the fan wearing my team's jersey, thank you all so much for all the support . And we're back. All right, well let's shift gears down and let's talk about TV. All right, there's so many books we didn't get to. I'm going to be adding a bunch of stuff to the notes . So if you liked Clone Wars, if you liked rebels, go watch 'em all. It is in the timeline between those two series . It is really well done It will at the last episode have you going now you have to wait for the next episode it's not Andor quality, it is definitely rebel's quality. So keep that same it's the same creator same voice actor style, same voice actors yeah, yeah very worried my dad . So for me the one that sort of quickly jumped up to one of my top shows of the year was Plurivus . And it went from , you know, this is by Vince Gilligan, same director behind Berry Bad, he worked on the X Files , Better Call Saul. And Plurivus is a masterpiece. It is it is slow , but the concepts are mind bending and it is really well done. And if you aren't familiar, essentially , the world is taken over by an alien hive mind and is told from the perspective of a woman who is somehow immune to this and is trying to negotiate with the hive mind to remain out of it . And it is just it is so good , so good. So that was Plurobus Plurabus. Yeah, yeah, and that's on Apple Apple TV. I just finished invasion and it is definitely better in the first season than the other two seasons. And that made me sad . Yeah, but yeah, invasion was not great. But I've decided I need some j oy in my life. So I'm gonna rewatch Expanse, which has no joy, but it is comfortable food . Yes . And I'm gonna rewatch Voltron and see if it's still any good all these decades later. So those are my comfort foods that get rewatched this summer. Yeah, we're still doing our Stargate SG one rewatch. We're into season eight now and they totally hold up . There's one hundred percent . And the other TV show that went onto my top ten of all time that also came out last year was Alien Earth. . And this is this is on Disney plus. This was done by the same director. I forget his name, but he's the one. He did was it Mutant X ? So it was sort of like a retelling of an X men story . And it was weird, but it was good . And this is this but it was sort of like more weird than it was good, which is always like a very delicate. I'm always sort of very skeptical when a person attempts to go weird, but alien earth is weird and go. Noah Yeah, no , yeah, yeah. And he introduces new terrifying xenomorphs the cannon and they are like a like a little alien that goes and replaces the eyeball of anything that it is in . So good, so good. And you start to understand the history of the humanoid robots, which is something that I don't really been addressed anywhere else. Yeah, yeah. And it's like said on earth. And I think, you know, when you hear the premise, you're like, oh, great, this sounds terrible. Like what is it? Xenomorphs rampaging around Earth. People are fighting back. No, it's none of that . It is a totally different story about evil corporations games up, you know, sort of having this one up being one another , corporate malfeasance , with the with with the potential incurs incursion of aliens on Earth and it is it's absolutely terrific . And again, in my top ten , one of the things that got me about this is introduces this concept probably without even meaning to , that mega corporations start to be like that schism between I think it was Portugal and England where the pope divided the world . And so we see these mega corporations of that's my property and you have to pay if you go there, well, that's fine and you and so just this division just sort of like, oh no, this is actually going . Yeah, yeah, I mean, like these ideas were handled quite well in Neuromancer by William Gibson and they sort of take this idea of corporations , mega corporations as state actors much more than just as corporate businesses that exist within a nation, they are nation states of their own, and yet they cross boundaries and they have powers the likes of which even the nation states that they're within cannot match and are at the cutting edge, the bleeding edge of the technology , of the development of artificial intelligence, and of going out, finding monsters and bringing them back to Earth , damn the consequences. So imagine if you had Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, all of these various big corporations, but they literally had no limits. Yeah And we're trying to be better than one. Oh, yeah. So that whole layer to it just elevates it into another level of art . I loved it so much. Let's talk about movies. All right, so if you're going to bring up alien earth, Badlands is a completely different look into the aliens Predator universe. Oh, that's the Predator Battle. It is just a delight . Yeah, it was great. It shows you a different side of the predators. It shows you basically a kid coming of age and struggling. And I mean one of the predators here . And yeah, it's just a delight. And I don't know what to say that won't give away plot points, but it has humanoid robots. It has essentially Kaiju, and I'm here for Kaiju. Always No, it was a popcorn thriller. Yeah, totally, totally. So it's by the same people as it drew got. It was the same people that did like the Cloverfield. Yeah. So yeah, yeah. So like really good solid filmmakers and you're exactly right, which is that the predators are not believable as villains because they're just like mustache twirling ev,il evil hunters that have no, but no in this, they try and focus on sort of explain the society, give you some glimpses about how it works, and then and then sort of explain the hunting as part of this and and that worked really well for me and then just the action and the creativity in the monsters yeah hundred percent. Ellis fanning in it is just fabulous yeah she's first so yeah it,'s director Dan Trach tenberg. Highly recommend grab yourself pizza, some soda , kick back and just prepare for a nothing burger of a delight. Yeah. And like there's no way people haven't watched Project Hill Mary yet, but if you haven't, go watch it. Go watch it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's going to probably leave theaters pretty soon if it hasn't already. It's going to switch to streaming , switch DVDs, but go enj andoy it in the theater if you can. Have you seen Disclosure Day? I haven't yet, but I'm hearing good things about it. Sure. So Carl and I have been watching a lot of of I've been on my DVD buying kick . And so I now have about three hundred DVDs behind me that I've been picking up at thrift stores over the last year . And I picked I got closed encounters of the third kind. And so we watched that and that was an experience. Yeah . Not what I remembered at all . I didn't love it. Or when it came out? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't love it so much. Like a lot of the ideas and sort of thoughts of it just kind of aged . Yeah. And so apparently like it was closing counters, ET, which I refuse to watch again. Like, I cannot bring myself to watch ET . And then disclosure day or sort of like a trilogy says Spielberg. Oh really? So yeah . Yeah, like ET blew my mind, but I want that I want as a child , but I want that that memory to exist in that in my memory for me to watch it as a fifty four year old man going, Oh God, cringe, this is terrible . And then you had you had a couple more movies that you had seen recently. Right. So Mickey seventeen is one about cloning that is just a this is the direction it could go in, isn't it? Yeah, so this is the direct same director Abon Jim , is the same director that did parasites. Right . And you can see that. And yeah, the basic premise is people can sign up to have their personality dumped from body to body to body, but they're only allowed to be in one body at a time . And an accident occurs where they think someone has died doing just like these people are signed to do terrible work , dangerous work, medical research, all that sort of stuff where ideally you want to test on a human being, but really you should not. So they're doing it on clones because that's more ethical . And so And so it raises all of these questions as you go , including, is it cheating if it's one clone and another ? So it's a book I wrote not a book. It's a movie I mean it is a book. It is a book. Okay, I did not know that. Yeah. Yeah, it's based on a book. So I enjoyed it. And then I also Frankenstein is super pretty and it is the closest retelling to the actual book that I think I've ever seen. Like it includes going through the ocean and finding Frankenstein out on the ice that I don't think I've seen in a movie ever before. And it's so pretty. It's pretty . So comfort food was to re watch the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure trilogy with Carlos . And I was super nervous because I loved it when I was young and they're great. They totally holds up . The first one is charming and fun . The second one is fine. It's a bun withch of of kind clever elements . And the third one is really good as well. So watching all three movies , they're on my top one hundred sci fi movies of all time, or the first one is. And I was like nervous, like, oh does it belong there still? And yep, it's terrific. I still loved it. All right, we're gonna take another break . Brian Reynolds here from Midmobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for fifteen dollars a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities , so do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mid mobile dot com slash switch . Upfront payment of forty five dollars for three month plan, equivalent to fifteen dollars per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. Feel terms at mint mobile dot com dot And we're back. So last but not least, we should talk about video games. And you just have like words. I play Minecraft. I like Minecraft. I play Minecraft. Yeah It's who I am as a person . So Splay The Spire is one of my all time favorite games and they sort of define this genre, the deck builder genre where you are making your way through this spire, this castle , and you run into these encounters and then you get cards that drop and then you have to sort of build a deck of cards that you can then . Well, it's everything. Okay, it's on everything. Yeah. And it is kind of like you're playing magic of the gathering or Parstone , but it is unfolding in real time and you're building the deck from what you find and you're having to make these compromises and and the fights get harder as your cards get better , but also your card gets kind of your deck gets overlooked. It is the greatest game. It is it is like top five best games ever made. One time payment or micro payments One time payment. Okay , it came out like maybe five, six years ago and so Slave the Spire two just came out and they sort of went back and came up with entirely new encounters, but they kept the entirely new classes for you to play. Yeah, you haven't played Slade Inspire. I haven't. I literally got fear of games games I'll get addicted and then you won't see me for eight months. Yeah, this one will destroy you. You know, slay the Spire, the original one will destroy . But it is so good. It is so good. And then slay the Spire too, also very good . And but you can never recapture the feeling of playing it in the first place. Like it is great and there's UI improvements and the totally new encounters and totally new spells and new dynamics and new but when you play like a yeah make sure if you do get slightly fire and it is great because it'll play on your phone, it'll play on your steam deck, it'll play on your computer, it'll play on your iPad wh.ate Lverike device you have, they have a version of it on your switch . You can play Slay the Spire and it is so great . And like define a whole genre of these deck builder games. I do play Magic the Gathering in real life . Yeah. So it's like if you just want that same itch where you're opening up booster packs to get booster packs to get new cards and figure out a way to use these in new and interesting ways, sl ave the Spire does at except you don't have to invest any money and the every run is different and you start to build up this understanding of the deeper mechanics of the game . It's yeah, and then there's different different classes the classes operate in different totally different ways . And yeah, they're so good . And then the other one is the new season of Path of Exile . And there' re still in there so it's zero point five. So they hadn't even gone to their full release yet, but we're about a little over a year since they first came out for Beta for Path of Exile and the new five edition, they redid the entire end game, add a bunch more classes , made the crafting system a lot better. It is starting to approach the complexity and quality of the original Path of Excel, but has a much better engine. And this is kind of Diablo. Like if you've ever played Diablo, running through dungeons, killer monsters, picking up their stuff, improving your character , rinse repeat, but Path of XL is just that for spreadsheet nerds. And Path of XL two is trying to sort of make it more of a more of an interesting accessible game while still having a lot of the deep mechanics and they're starting to kind of get to the point where the Path of XL two is as good as Path of XL one. I still like Path of XL one better, but two. If you want an introduction, if you like want to start playing the game now, it is very polished , definitely on its way and they're hoping to have it released by the end of the year for one point zero. It's amazing. And you know, relatively you could play Path of Excel for free and you could play Path of XL two for I think thirty bucks. An account for it. Yeah, it's not bad at all. And it'll give you, I mean, I have two or three thousand hours of time in the Path of XL one. Yeah, and probably three hundred hours inath a pFXL two. So yeah yeah, . Bang for your buck, it's literally limitless. Yeah. All right . I think we've reached the end of our episode. So hopefully this will give people some ideas and we tried to give you new stuff that maybe you hadn't heard of before , so that will keep you busy over the summer. There's one book that I need to mention that I didn't get in. Sure. John Skullsy's When the Moon hits your eye absolutely ridiculous and if you just need escapism physics , Phil Play, one of our friends, was the science advisor on it and it is a delight . So yeah, he turns the moon into actual cheese. Yeah, yeah, it is it is a must read at some point. Yes. And we'll bring you silly joy. That's great. Fantastic. All right , thanks Palm. Thank you, Fraser. And thank you to all of our Patreons . Some of you are realizing you can make me say silly things by having silly patreon names. To those of you who make me laugh, I raise a toast. To those of you with names I'm about to mispronounce