In this sequel to the “Android Dreams” episode, Derek Power returns as he and host Cindy Collins Smith tackle Denis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049. While Derek finds echoes of the Incarnation in the miraculously-born child and its protectors, the conversation ultimately centers on the results of choice more than destiny.

For many months Fr. David Subu, Jos Johnson, Sam Cook, and Cindy Collins Smith traveled the Sword Coast together in a Baldur’s Gate 3 multiplayer campaign, confronting enemies who sought to enslave the world and turn them into Mindflayers. In this episode, they recount their adventures and discuss the choices for good, evil, and chaos that their characters made along the way and the ways they helped each other navigate the game.

In this episode, new guest Derek Power and host Cindy Collins Smith geek out over Blade Runner’s place in cinema and examine the Frankensteinian questions it raises about what it means to be human and what it means to be a facsimile. To what extent can the two become like the other and where is God in all of this? The episode title (“Android Dreams”) of course calls back to “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” - the Philip K. Dick novel that Ridley Scott adapted for this film. But more than that, it suggests that replicants might unpredictably have aspirations beyond those they were programmed to have.

In another solo reaction commentary, host Cindy Collins Smith takes on the finale to Stranger Things - including how its Mind Flayer plot parallels the Mind Flayer in Baldur’s Gate 3, how the government’s efforts to turn humans into Cold War weapons hearkens back to Frankenstein and Myst, how confronting fear can lead differently disposed characters to compassion or an embrace of evil, how El’s final act reinforces her friends’ choice to believe in the good… and how the song that helped tear down the Berlin Wall became the culminating song for the series.

Modern video gaming does not exist without the 90s classics Myst and Riven. In this episode, we dive into these video game classics and their associated novels with a panel consisting of host Cindy Collins Smith, Fr. Evan Cummings, and Maggie and Jos Johnson. The ensuing conversation covers the groundbreaking nature of Myst, its influence on other media like the TV show Lost, and the impact of its rich aesthetic and complex puzzles on the gaming industry as a whole. The panel also delves into the collaborative nature of these games, the intricate storytelling, and the philosophical and moral themes embedded in the Myst saga - drawing parallels with the biblical narratives and Shakespearean drama that came before it. Here is the Myst Trilogy of ebooks mentioned in the episode: https://www.amazon.com/Myst-Trilogy-Rand-Miller-ebook/dp/B0FH5PTQ7P Here is a playlist of the entire Myst Soundtrack (Robyn Miller, 1993): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVIBbYYzNw8&list=PLF0F0D1BF9F96BFC7