Better Worlds

Life has been busy, but here’s a handful of topics that we wanted to talk about on October 7. Shocking news about Telltale Games! The first teaser image for The Mandalorian! We finally have a trailer for Captain Marvel! Please clap.

Dread it. Run from it. We will circle back around to talking about Destiny. And now, it's here. Or should I say, Better Worlds 42 is. Also, the robot dinosaur concierge revolution.

One of the "25 Most Disruptive Apps of 2012" continues to make incredible product decisions. Kelly Marie Tran reveals her real name. Telltale's Guardians of the Galaxy game has Matthew's seal of approval. The trailers for Aquaman and SHAZAM! are items we discuss.

This episode features an unplanned deep dive into the complete Alien franchise, and the latest news (at time of recording) about Star Wars: Episode IX and The Clone Wars. We also discuss board games, movie-watching decisions, dangerous holidays, and how you really should join our Slack.

We're going back to the show's roots: video games. Trevor and Matthew update Dustin on the state of Destiny 2. We also discuss this year's E3 announcements and debate the merits of mechs, game downloads vs. discs, and playing old games.

In this episode we discuss a couple interesting articles covering The Field Museum, user interfaces for mummies, and dinosaurs. We also return to Solo for some items we missed, including the more-controversial-than-it-should-be question of which Star Wars movies people are allowed to like.

Part 2 of our discussion of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Part 1 of our discussion of Solo: A Star Wars Story.

Part 2 of our discussion about Avengers: Infinity War.

Part 1 of our discussion about Infinity War.

Matthew gets his completely spoiler-free thoughts about Infinity War on the record before we all see the movie. Also discussed: Pacific Rim, Ready Player One, Hufflepuff representation, and a possible Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV revival.

War! *huh* What is it good for? In Wakanda, rhinos. Yes, we forgot to mention some things about *Black Panther*. The sun will never set on our Wakandan followup, but this is not a Part 3. In fact, it's less than 40% of this episode, and we save it for the end. This episode also covers *An American Tail*, a land where there are no sasquatches and the streets are paved with snow, and the future of sustainability in construction toys & coffee making. We manage to limit ourselves to two Star Wars-related mini-topics and only one non-*Black Panther* MCU digression: "Who am Groot?"

We did what we had to do… and kept talking about Black Panther for a second episode. Actually, we just kept talking, and then split it into two episodes later. This half of the conversation goes into characters, plot points, and overarching themes of the movie.

Shuri enough, our discussion of the latest MCU movie went long. This episode covers the first half of our conversation on Black Panther, along with important information about crocodiles, middle names, and Nokia's product road map.

Are we living in the Darkest Possible Timeline? The signs are everywhere: Jumanji is a runaway box office success. Minions have almost completed their takeover of our dimension. Keurig has purchased Dr Pepper. But there are signs of hope.

Is Frosty who he says he is? Can Levar Burton read? What incredible risk did Matthew take as he rewatches the early MCU movies? In this episode we discuss mystical creatures such as golems, hevisaurs, Elcor, murder whales, camelcorns, and colonels, followed by space exploration, books & reading, and what’s happening in video games. We wrap it up by revisiting the early MCU movies as we continue to prepare ourselves for Avengers: Infinity War.

We present a discovery which may change your world: the first known dinosaurs native to Finland. Other topics include what A New Hope would sound like with an all-Elcor cast, some followup on The Last Jedi, murder whales, and Kingdom of Loathing.

The conversation on Star Wars: The Last Jedi continues into deeper waters, sort of like that time R2-D2 fell off of Luke’s X-wing into a swamp. This episode explores the new age of space combat, the unchanging nature of the Force, and the theme of killing the past… especially when it’s The Force Awakens.

The Star Wars saga continues with Episode VIII: The Last Jedi. (We will never surrender our Roman numerals, whatever the Lucasfilm marketing department might say.) This episode of Better Worlds explores important questions like: What has JJ done? What is Rian doing? What isn’t Finn doing? What is Luke pretending to do? What is Rey capable of doing? Why is Poe doing that? This is the first half of a conversation recorded on Sunday, December 17.

In the conclusion to our Episodes With No Name Trilogy, we make an accidental return to main topics with our discussion of Justice League. Only two of us have seen the movie, but 66% is still better than the movie’s score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Main Topics are dead, and we have killed them. Last time we thought we were doing a followup show, but now it’s official: we’re going to talk about whatever we want to talk about. This time, that includes Nordic Facts (the future of Finland Facts?), some Tower Thoughts (it’s a Destiny thing… are we still explaining jokes?), candy rankings (maybe we did have a main topic), and Thor: Ragnarok (no spoilers; we promise).

Our followup list got long, so we decided to do our first all-followup episode. Which turned into a small amount of followup surrounded by conversation ranging from game shows to board games, Lord of the Rings to Destiny 2, and weapons of mass destruction to… sports? There’s also a little bit of spoiler-free trailer talk on Pacific Rim: Uprising, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Justice League.

A straw man, a Scotsman, and literally Hitler walk into a bar. Is it a joke (punchline: something something “unnatural”), or are they our top picks for the finest logical fallacies?

Dustin isn’t playing Destiny 2 (yet?), so he has questions for Matthew and Trevor. This is a shorter-than-usual bonus episode covering our initial thoughts on Destiny 2 as of September 10, the fifth day after the Cabal attacked.

In the second of this quantum pair of episodes, we talk about how we’ve seen quantum physics used in fiction. Dustin graciously continues to answer our questions. There’s also a bit of a history lesson on how quantum physics were preceded in science fiction by radium and transistors.

Dustin fills us in on quantum mechanics and what he’s been doing with his life. Matthew struggles to understand the dangers of “eclipse madness.” Trevor struggles to think of good quantum questions.

All the news from Comic-Con that’s fit to ramble on about.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man We watched the sixth movie of Spider-Man He slings some webs In the ’burbs We all thought it was pretty gurb

Wonder Woman is a significant milestone for superhero movies: a DC movie that all three of us were interested in talking about.

E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is like Christmas for the world of video games. That is, if Christmas was a time for watching videos about presents that you might get someday, possibly months or years into the future. And if you like to spend Christmas talking about your hopes and fears for what those presents will be like.

It isn't fair. Books, books, everywhere, and all of them to read. Drowning in choices? We toss you a life preserver of sorts—our own recent reads.

We have slain gods and plagues. Now it’s time for some patrolling and light banter. Bungie has started making announcements about the sequel to Destiny (coming out September 8), so we decided it was time for a retrospective on the game that birthed a podcast.

Hannah & the Heptapods are getting the band back together to revisit their 2016 smash hit, Arrival. Journey with us to mysterious Montana as we ask what makes great science fiction, what does it mean to choose something better than fear, and how many words can Dustin coin in one episode? If you haven’t seen the movie yet, you can listen up to the spoiler warning at the 57-minute mark. (We want to tell you why you should see Arrival.)

The first teaser trailers are out for Thor: Ragnarok and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and by Odin’s beard, they shall be discussed. We also cover a host of other topics including coffee math, ancient math, movie math, starfighter/airplane age math, and Force-alignment math.

Every spring, birds begin to sing of Free Comic Book Day, and flowers bloom in anticipation of the wonders in store. Here’s our guide to this year’s event.

In the next step towards the Singularity, Netflix is growing thumbs. Meanwhile, the humans can’t agree on what stars mean, and some of them really don’t like Rotten Tomatoes. Stick around for our most educational aftershow yet, brought to you by Dustin and Matthew’s strange new fixation on Finland.

A champion is crowned.

As the saying goes: "If you love something, send it into gladiatorial combat." In Better Worlds' first superhero tournament (our first anything tournament, for that matter), we have ten Marvel and six DC heroes facing off for the biggest birthday blast this side of Tunguska. Sixteen heroes enter, only one… will… Belay that. This discussion got a little more heated than we expected, so this is going to be a two-parter. Fill out your bracket and follow along.

If anthropology is the study of humans, and cultural anthropology is more specifically the study of human culture, then we're guessing that cultural dinopology is the study of dinosaurs in human culture. We are not linguistics experts; we just play three on a podcast. This episode covers The Big Five dinosaurs or dinosaur archetypes (depending on whether you're asking Dustin or Trevor), the Jurassic Park franchise, Terra Nova, Primeval, and a grab bag of terrible movies at the end.

This week we discuss news stories about old things. That's right: dinosaur news. They're terrible lizards, Brent.

This is about our very favorite show. We call her Firefly. Tell you what; you watch this show, treat her proper, she'll be with ya for the rest of your life. 00:00 - Intro & follow up 05:30 - Firefly, no spoilers 48:52 - Spoilers 90:01 - Aftershow See full shownotes at http://betterworlds.net/podcast/3/

Christmas provides perfect lab conditions for new board games. Here's a rundown of the games we tested on our families over the holiday break.

Do Wookiees care what constitutes a normal human greeting? Are the Mon Calamari bent on war? Why do some Imperial walkers have holes in them? Dustin, Matthew, and Trevor answer these questions and more while discussing Rogue One in the first full episode of Better Worlds.

Dustin ponders which LEGO game to buy. Matthew assumes that podcasts have redeeming virtue, possibly as an archival resource. Trevor doesn't believe in dictionaries. Against all odds, they announce their new podcast: Better Worlds, a fortnightly foray into geek culture across mediums.