On this week's show, Dana and Stephen are joined by Supreme Friend of the Podcast (SFOP) Isaac Butler, author of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act. The trio first explores The Wild Robot, DreamWork Animation's handcrafted, lovingly made film that's the surprise of the year. Lupita Nyong'o voices ROZ, an old-fashioned robot powered by supremely advanced A.I. who must learn about and adapt to her new wild surroundings. Then, they dissect Nobody Wants This, a new Netflix series starring Kristen Bell (who plays a sex podcaster) and Adam Brody as a hot rabbi. Although there are obvious charms, the show's "will they, won't they" rom-com beats can often feel, at best, gratingly familiar, and at worst, bizarre and unthoughtful, particularly in its portrayal of Jewish women.

This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. In "His Master's Voice," a 1968 sci-fi novel by the Polish writer Stanisław Lem, a team of scientists and scholars convened by the American government try to decipher a neutrino signal from outer space. They manage to translate a fragment of the signal's information, and a couple of the scientists use it to construct a powerful weapon, which the project's senior mathematician fears could wipe out humanity. The intention behind the message remains elusive, but why would an advanced life-form have broadcast instructions that could be so dangerous? Late one night, a philosopher on the team named Saul Rappaport, who emigrated from Europe in the last year of the Second World War, tells the mathematician about a time--"the year was 1942, I think"--when he nearly died in a mass execution.