Episode 209 - Wassup Bro

[Mike]

Mike talks about continuing playtesting of the board game Godball. Then in the Science Corner, it’s all about the reproducibility of science and the joy of being wrong. This week’s Nerd Culture Report is all about the Punisher and Captain America as competing symbols of American patriotism. R2 rolls out a neat baker’s dozen of all-new, listener-submitted questions for the Pod-O-Matic. This is the podcast that you’ve dreamed about since you were a kid. Don’t miss another moment of it!

Enjoy!

[Eliahad]

Flame: Mike says, "I guess he's okay. I mean, kind of, anyway." I'm paraphrasing.

[Eliahad]

I keed, I keed. He only said nice things and related the story where you were about to hose us by throwing up that Mountain range and making everyone fall down.

Also, the initial set is Aphrodite, Athena, Hera, Hermes, Poseidon, Zeus. Ares is planned for the first expansion, he is not included in the first set because I wanted equal representation across Gods and Goddesses and Hermes, Poseidon and Zeus seemed to be a better fit for the initial game. (Ares is going to be cool, but in my imagination, he will manipulate the game board in less overt ways and manipulate other Heroes more.)

That means the first expansion will be: Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Demeter, Hephaestus and Dionysus (or Hestia) and will most likely include the Hades Deck for fun game changing events.

[Producefarmer]

Hey Mike! Sorry I missed Listener Betrayal this week! If you guys haven't seen The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Video, I highly recommend it, especially if you're a fan of WW2-era history. American Gods had a really good first season too.

[Mike]

I forgot about Man in the High Castle! I watched the first two eps a while back and forgot to go back. Excellent alt history.

[Phoebe]

Enjoyed the episode, very interesting. Your Supporting Cast was also helpful. I haven't had time to listen to the previous one, but now I know that in it you answered some questions of mine about Paranoia and I'm all excited and need to make time to do that! Godball is really awesome, I gotta say. Right from the start, it just works. When you sit down to play a new game sometimes it takes a little bit to get acquainted with it, but you just know whether it's fun and whether it gels. This game is obviously fun and the basic mechanism works even if you decide to tweak it a few ways. The second time was even better than the first, as far as changes and improvements. Hoping that you get going forward far enough to a Kickstarter or prototypes that can get this game launched! I want a Godball deck!

[Pez]

The "being wrong" discussion made me think of this XKCD comic as a kind of "admitting when you don't know something" corollary:

[Mike]

A) Welome Pez!

B) Oh man! That is one of my favorite XKCDs of all time! I try to live by that. Any time you reference something super-cool and someone says they have no idea what you're talking about, the immediate response should be: "Oh crap! I don't want to spoil it then. Let's go check this out, because you are in for a treat!"

You can only experience the joy of discovering a particular amazing fact one time. But if you're lucky, you can share the joy and watch it vicariously through someone else.

Good call.

[FlameBlade]

Consider this: diet coke and mentos went viral over 13 years ago. There are a lot of teens who are not even aware of this fact.

[Kyle]

So apparently the creator of the Punisher and the current writer of the comic agree with you that the police idolization of the Punisher is wrong on many levels. They even put it into a recent comic:

https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-real-punish ... 1836085595

[Mike]

That is amazing. Thank you!