Science Faction Podcast

About Science Faction Podcast

A science and science fiction based podcast hosted by two high school friends, and two college friends. Listen and learn and geek out. In this podcast, science meets fact, meets fiction.

Publisher

Devon Craft and Steven Domingues and Benjamin Daniel Lawless

Category

education · science

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 May 2022

Latest episode

7 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

231 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   7 Oct 2026

   Episode 629: Pregaming The Jetlag

   This week, Ben returns from Orlando with tales of theme parks, electric cars, Florida humidity, and some very large rockets. Steven celebrates a fantastic Lanterns finale before asking whether the universe is actually infinite, while Devon somehow turns a conversation about having nothing to talk about into a discussion of the 11th dimension. Naturally. Real Life Ben is back from Orlando, but before we get to theme parks and spaceships, we need to answer an important question: can you beat jet lag by changing your sleep schedule before a trip with a three-hour time difference? Ben tried it, and now we get to find out whether this was clever preparation or just voluntarily making himself tired ahead of time. Once in Florida, Ben got the full Orlando experience. He spent some time driving a Polestar electric car and visited Epic Universe. He also hit Andretti Indoor Karting—which sounds increasingly like Dave & Buster's after somebody turned the chaos knob all the way up—and explored the upside-down weirdness of WonderWorks Orlando. Devon's adventures stayed a little closer to home. He went laser tagging with his kids. Just his kids. Apparently, the day will eventually come when they abandon him and he'll be left Home Alone. At least that gives him an excuse for a movie marathon. Steven, meanwhile, finished Lanterns, and the finale was firing on all cylinders. The first season manages to tell such a complete story that a potential second season faces an interesting problem: where do you go from here without simply trying to repeat what already worked? Future or Now Ben's Florida vacation inevitably turned into Today in Space when he visited Kennedy Space Center. The first scientific observation: Florida is really freakin' humid. After recovering from that discovery, Ben checked out Launch Complex 39, the Vehicle Assembly Building, and some of the areas now connected to SpaceX and Blue Origin operations. There was also the launch simulator, because apparently looking at rockets isn't enough—we need to pretend to ride one too. The trip also adds to Ben's growing collection of enormous pieces of spaceflight history. He's now seen two Saturn V rockets, in Huntsville and Florida, with Texas still waiting on the list. He's also seen two Space Shuttles: Pathfinder in California and Atlantis in Florida. This Week in Space: Is the Universe Infinite? Steven brings us one of those wonderfully simple questions that becomes less simple the longer you think about it: Is the universe infinite? Measurements of the cosmic microwave background—the ancient light left over from the early universe—indicate that the universe is remarkably flat on the largest scales we can observe. It's tempting to hear "flat" and immediately conclude "infinite," but those aren't necessarily the same thing. As discussed in coverage from ScienceDaily and Universe Today, the observable universe could represent only a tiny portion of something much larger with curvature we simply cannot detect from our limited perspective. Stranger still, space might be flat while having a topology that allows it to wrap around itself. In other words, you could theoretically have a universe with no obvious edge that still isn't infinite in the straightforward way we normally imagine infinity. And this is approximately where Devon starts talking about the 11th dimension. Because why stop at asking whether the universe is infinite when we can ask whether our entire universe somehow exists on the edge of a black hole in a higher-dimensional reality? Jet lag, theme parks, Saturn V rockets, cosmic topology, and higher-dimensional black holes. Just another week on Science Faction.

2. 

   30 Sept 2026

   Episode 628: Feelings Are Not Facts

   This week on Science Faction, we tackle the important questions: Is bread actually good? Can a Disney Channel movie sneak science fiction past Steven? Can Star Trek: Strange New Worlds finally make Ben stop complaining? And, most importantly, how did a movie about sheep detectives turn out to be legitimately great? Then, in Future or Now, things get a little more serious as Devon brings us a massive Kelvin wave moving toward California, while Ben explores a fake version of Windows 11 that leads us into a much bigger question: why are we still using computers basically the same way we have for decades? Real Life We begin, naturally, with bread. Ben is against it. Devon, who apparently becomes increasingly French whenever bread is involved, is very much in favor of it. Steven loves sourdough and becomes increasingly concerned about what exactly Ben considers the staple crops of his diet. Devon settles the matter with perhaps the strongest argument anyone can make: fresh French bread is amazing, and he will eat all of it. From there, Steven has two movies to discuss, neither of which would normally be considered science fiction. Or would they? First up is Big City Greens: Spacecation, which gets a thumbs-up from Steven. It's a Big City Greens adventure that sends the family into space, which certainly sounds suspiciously like science fiction. There's also a familiar name in the writing credits: Mike Trapp. Then there's The Love Hypothesis. If you've listened to Steven talk about romantic comedies before, you probably already know where this conversation is headed. If you don't, well…he's going to tell you. Meanwhile, Ben has reached the end of another season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, which raises an important question: is there a limit to how long Ben can complain about Star Trek? Season four is over, and somehow the show may have accidentally made a good Star Trek episode. That sends us into a bigger discussion about what some fans want from the franchise: an aspirational future where science, discovery, truth, and people working together matter more than enormous space armadas and the latest galaxy-ending artificial intelligence. Could this finally make Ben stop complaining about Star Trek? Maybe for five minutes. But the biggest surprise of Ben's week was The Sheep Detectives. And apparently it was EPIC. Ben calls it a genuinely smart movie and, perhaps most impressively, says it succeeds where Cars 2 failed. Beneath the absurd premise of sheep solving a mystery, there's a story dealing with grief and trauma that worked far better than Ben expected. Ben recommends it. Strongly. Future or Now Devon brings us something considerably larger than sheep detectives: a slow-moving, planetary-scale Kelvin wave heading toward California. The Guardian: Concern mounts over planetary-scale Kelvin wave heading for California The enormous mass of warm water is moving across the Pacific and could affect sea levels along the California coast, with changes potentially approaching a foot in some areas. That leads us into a conversation about what these enormous ocean systems actually mean when they finally reach land—and, for Devon, a much more personal connection involving his son and the devastating flooding in Texas. Then Ben takes us somewhere considerably sillier. Definitely Not Windows is exactly what it sounds like: a parody of Windows 11 that gives us an excuse to complain about modern operating systems. But the joke leads into a much more interesting question. Why do computers still work like this? Windows, icons, folders, desktops, applications—we've been iterating on essentially the same basic ideas for decades. Ben brings in Scott Jenson's exploration of what could come next and asks whether we're really going to use the same desktop UX forever. Scott Jenson: Are we really going to use the same Desktop UX forever? If artificial intelligence changes how we interact with computers, maybe the future isn't simply an AI assistant sitting inside the same old operating system. Maybe the entire idea of what an operating system looks like—and how we tell a computer what we want—needs to change. So this week we've got bread, romantic comedies, surprisingly good Star Trek, emotionally complicated sheep, planetary waves, fake Windows, and the possible death of the desktop. You know. Science Faction.

3. 

   23 Sept 2026

   Episode 627: I Have No Hands, And I Must Play Super Mario

   This week on Science Faction, we've got VR mini golf inside a gelatinous lair, Lanterns continuing its hot streak, questionable Resident Evil continuity, and Devon discovering that talking about guitar theory apparently removes all normal limits on podcast airtime. Then we get into the science: human neurons growing inside mouse brains and the complete nervous system of a fruit fly being reconstructed digitally—because apparently mapping a brain isn't enough anymore. Now we need to see if it can play Doom. Real Life Ben has been back in Walkabout Mini Golf, checking out Gloop Lair, a new course that sends players into a wonderfully strange underground world filled with colorful goo, bizarre environments, and exactly the sort of elaborate miniature-golf nonsense that keeps us coming back to this game. Gloop Lair: https://www.mightycoconut.com/gloop-lair (https://www.mightycoconut.com/gloop-lair) Steven continues his weekly declaration that Lanterns is amazing, this time after Episode 6. We also get a Nathan Fillion sighting as Guy Gardner, which naturally gives us another excuse to talk about superheroes. Steven has also fallen even farther down the vibe-coding rabbit hole. The latest project is CRAWLBOX, a loot-box generator built for the Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG. What started as a relatively simple helper for generating rewards has, predictably, turned into an increasingly elaborate system for creating randomized weapons, armor, magic items, consumables, enchantments, and other crawler loot. Try CRAWLBOX: https://dungeon-crawler-loot.stevezero.chatgpt.site (https://dungeon-crawler-loot.stevezero.chatgpt.site) Ben brings us the strange crossover between The Rookie and Dropout, which raises some questions about what happens when a network procedural collides with the very different world of internet comedy. Read more at IndieWire: https://www.indiewire.com/features/commentary/dropout-the-rookie-crossover-controversy-explained-1235182321/ Steven also watched the latest Resident Evil movie. Is it a reboot? Is it connected to something else? Does any of that actually matter? Who knows. What we do know is that it was an entertaining distraction that seems squarely aimed at a younger, roughly 18–24 audience. Meanwhile, Devon is tired and claims he hasn't been doing much—which somehow turns into an extended discussion about learning Bullet for My Valentine songs, taking guitar lessons online, and studying the CAGED system. And then something remarkable happens: Devon starts talking about music. And keeps talking. And keeps talking. Steven eventually has a more fundamental question: Why is Devon putting this much effort into learning all of this guitar stuff? That launches us into a much bigger conversation about learning an instrument, understanding music instead of simply playing songs, and why apparently the secret to getting Devon to talk forever is mentioning a fretboard. Future or Now Human Neurons…Inside Mouse Brains Devon brings us a story that sounds like the opening act of a science-fiction movie: researchers are growing human neurons inside mouse brains. Scientists are using these transplanted human cells to study how neurons develop and behave inside a living brain, potentially giving researchers a new way to investigate neurodevelopmental disorders that are difficult to reproduce using traditional laboratory models. It's fascinating research. It's also one of those sentences where every additional explanation somehow makes it sound more like science fiction. Read the Science article: https://www.science.org/content/article/human-neurons-flourish-mouse-brains-offering-new-view-neurodevelopmental-disorders We Mapped a Fruit Fly Brain. Naturally, We Made It Play Video Games. Steven's story starts with a major scientific achievement: researchers produced a remarkably detailed map of the nervous system of an adult male fruit fly. That alone is impressive. The resulting connectome gives researchers an extraordinary look at how a relatively small biological brain is wired together. But this is the internet, so obviously somebody had to ask the important question: Can we use it to play video games? Researchers and programmers are already experimenting with computational models based on fruit-fly neural circuitry, including attempts to put these systems into virtual environments involving games such as Doom and Super Mario 64. Which raises some wonderfully strange questions. If you reproduce the connections inside a brain, how much of the original behavior comes along with it? How much does the body matter? Could increasingly sophisticated connectomes eventually produce useful artificial agents? And, perhaps most importantly, how humiliating will it be when a fruit fly becomes better at Doom than we are? Read more: Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/google-mapped-a-fruit-flys-brain-now-its-playing-doom-and-super-mario-64-2000808616 Google Research — A Connectomics Milestone: Mapping the Complete Male Fruit Fly Brain: https://research.google/blog/a-connectomics-milestone-mapping-the-complete-male-fruit-fly-brain/ This week: VR goo, Guy Gardner, vibe-coded loot boxes, entirely too much guitar theory, human neurons living in mice, and a fruit fly learning to play video games. Just another perfectly normal episode of Science Faction.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

558

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.2 / 5

10 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 77 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

92

Social presence

0

YouTube

66

Engagement

89