Hosting The STARLOG Podcast involves more preparation than you may think. I don’t just get on the horn with someone like Rodney Ascher or Ariel Waldman or, like this week, Daniel Kraus without familiarizing myself with what it is they’ve been working on.

So here’s a little preview: a few episodes from now, barring the possibility that one of us shall find ourselves trapped in another dimension, Dave and I intend to speak to Alan Sepinwall about his new memoir of Rod Serling.

I’ve read the book (it’s great) but reading it destroyed my productivity this week. I’ve wasted righteously devoted a lot of time watching old episodes of The Twilight Zone.

Last night I saw an episode that was new to me, “A Penny for Your Thoughts,” one Serling did not write (but the great George Clayton Johnson did.) The gag is simple — for reasons I’m not going to explain, Dick York is temporarily blessed/cursed with the ability to hear people’s thoughts.

The episode is mainly played for laughs (it has a happy ending!) and is a great deal of fun. It’s also one of the few Zones you can watch today in 2026 and not come away saying “this is so prophetic!” Because people today can’t stop telling you what’s on their mind!

The thoughts York overhears either in the street or at the office are, by and large, of the “if only I could say this in polite society!” variety. At least the ones that don’t involve marital infidelity or fiduciary crime. The waves of chatter that would have been improper back in 1961 are the common stuff of Facebook posts and Instagram reels today.

A young person watching this episode will still be taken with the vision of mid-20th century America, a world where everyone wore a coat and tie and bought newspapers for a quarter, but they won’t recognize or fathom a workspace where everyone isn’t blabbing about their feels all the time. Just imagine how productive everyone was back then!

Obviously I’m exaggerating a little bit, but a morning stroll through social media — where you can see the person’s name and where they work right next to the bananapants comments they make — often feels like a visit to The Twilight Zone.

Anyway, if you pay for Paramount + (or don’t mind occasional intrusive ads on Tubi), it’s great to revisit these old shows. You may want to zone up a bit before our expected Serling podcast episode.

Jordan Hoffman, Communications Officer

This is not a knock against the kid. He was a kid! But he was fed talking points by the producers, and STARLOG had to run with it because of the way film release and publication schedules worked back then. I’m sure studio publicists wished things like that still worked today.

Anyhow STARLOG was all-in on Barret being the next big star, and at the time it seemed likely. He wasn’t just in D.A.R.Y.L.; he was in The NeverEnding Story, Cocoon, Frankenweenie, and a two-parter of Knight Rider — all of which were heavy STARLOG projects. But as you’ll hear, the young lad seemed to already be somewhat weary of Hollywood, and even predicted that one day he might give it up. Which he did. (Today he is an art photographer.)

You can hear all about this by clicking the “listen” button below.

This was a huge week on the STARLOG Podcast. We’ve had nothing but terrific guests, but author Daniel Kraus is our first Pulitzer Prize-winner, and also the first one to make me look up from a book and ask “wait, can you do that?!?”

Kraus’s previous work includes Angel Down, a breathless WWI-set supernatural tale, the ocean-set Whalefall, which is breathless in a whole different way, plus collaborations with George A. Romero, Guillermo del Toro, and others. We get into it all (or, at least, most) during our conversation, but stick mainly to his latest — the absolutely batshit hard sci-fi experience The Sixth Nik.

Kraus discusses his writing process, plus I use the time we had to get into the nerdiest contours of his fictional world. We discuss aerotonal travel, The UN+, The Snarl, atrocity algorithms, the Iron Sea, and a lot more. I know this all sounds baffling (yet cool!), which is why you really need to check this episode out.

The new episode of The STARLOG Podcast, like the ones before it, is on whatever podcasting platform you prefer. Or you can just click the little “listen” button below.

SCI-FI

This is a few months old but new to me and maybe to you. The Library of America interviewed curator Sarah Shin to discuss an exhibit tied to Ursula K. Le Guin, specifically her cartography. These were maps she made as aids to her writing process, but have revealed themselves to be works of art in their own right. Check this out (and give yourself a little time).

SCIENCE

You’ll hear more about this on next week’s podcast, but here’s a sneak peek … at a 32-year-old film. One of the most remarkable documentaries about space travel and the Soviet space program, Maciej J. Drygas’s State of Weightlessness has been very difficult to view in the USA. That ends next week when it begins streaming on Ovid TV. The Right Stuff it ain’t! Here’s the trailer.

CULTURE

Here it is, folks. A collection of the greatest Star Trek tattoos in the galaxy. I can’t decide if Sassy Worf is my favorite or the Bob Peak-TMP celebration. This page on InkedMag is so terrific I don’t even mind that they accidentally included a Star Wars one.

ETHICS

If you listen to The STARLOG Podcast you’ve heard Dave and me share several stories about AI overreach and instances of this new tech doing all the things dystopian sci-fi writers have warned us about. In the spirit of fairness, here is a (mostly) recent story about AI helping children with rare diseases. Score one for Claude.