I’m getting a bit contemplative at the end of the year, and this month we’re talking about the importance of the mystery of the night. Everything feels just a little more magical in the dark, and why that just feels right as a witch. That’s right, we’re talking about an aesthetic this time around. Who would have guessed?

Read Trae’s new Novel Buried Memories!
ISBN: 9798349560958
eBook: Kindle / Kobo / ePub
Paperback: Amazon / Bookshop / Direct Order

Also check out the rest of Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “The Man With One Eye,” “So I Said It, “Putz and Pulse,” “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

The post 90. Nighttime. first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.

Charlie and Miles have ‘gifted’ each other episodes of Star Trek to talk about, both good and bad. The problem with being casual about Star Trek is you just don’t know all of what’s out there. That’s what the Casual Trek mission is for, after all.

This year the gang are doing something different, talking about a film that’s adjacent to Star Trek, and even some Trek actors say is the best Star Trek movie: Galaxy Quest. They’ve even got guest stars Reanna Reid-Lobatto and Sean Corse from off of the Famicom Dojo joining the festivities.

So sit by the fire, get a nice drink and listen to some nerds getting rabid about a fun film, even if it has Tim Allen in it.

Timecodes:
0:03:47 – What Non-Star Trek/non-Galaxy Quest Thing We’ve Been Enjoying: Pokémon Legends ZA, Taskmaster,
0:21:49 – Galaxy Quest Preamble
0:33:12 – Galaxy Quest Recap
0:54:51 – Thoughts on the movie

Talking points include: The Mojoverse, the Junkions, chilli, needing to cuddle a Pokémon, Detective Pikachu, Pokémon Legends ZA, John Pertwee’s Doctor Who episodes, conventions, Thought Bubble, Sean learning about names from the UK, Westlife, Santana, Chat Out of Hell’s Westlife episode, Charlie’s musical knowledge comes from Rock Band, Miles’ anecdote about how he saw Galaxy Quest (funny, charming), Charlie’s anecdote about watching Pokémon: The Movie (thankfully short, of questionable legal status). Charlie pitching 2000 AD, “some of the old tentacle action”, Sam Rockwell, Susan from Seinfeld, fandom in media, “Duct Tape Boy”, what is wrong with Monk from Monk, convicted felon & narc Tim Allen actually being okay in this, Airplane, The Shining, Three Amigos, favourite non-Christmas Christmas movies. Oh, and occasionally Galaxy Quest.

[ Additional Show Notes ]

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.

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The post 88. By Grabthar’s Hammer, What a Podcast first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.

Welcome to an emergency bonus episode!

Miles is off, but the fortnightly schedule continues. Charlie’s played a solo roleplaying game based on Star Trek. No, not the official one, but “We Saved This Vessel Once.” After that, there’s the unhinged pitches from our Section 31 episode, which includes Sean Corse of Famicom Dojo, and Celeste Startwin of Stormwood & Associates!

01:16 – Solo Actual Play
07:38 – Section 31 Pitch Session

Pedant’s Corner and Pluggable: Reanna Reid-Lobatto’s got a GoFundMe (not a Just Giving like I said in the episode… although I don’t remember if that’s a thing or not). If you can, please help the Reid-Lobattos deal with the expense of her surgery: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-reannas-breast-reconstruction-recovery.

We Saved this Vessel Once can be found here: https://citykey.itch.io/we-saved-this-vessel-once

[ Additional Show Notes ]

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.

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The post Bonus – We Saved This Vessel Once & Section 31 Pitch Session first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.

One of the biggest things I think a lot of older witches take for granted is that people understand what makes Wicca, well, Wicca. While we’ve discussed the history before, and last month talked about the weird anti-Wicca backlash, I think there are a lot of misconceptions about how this incredibly diverse religion is practiced. Frankly, just the fact that it is largely an orthopraxic religion and not an orthodoxic one is a concept a lot of folks raised in predominantly Christian frameworks struggle with.

So let’s talk about it.

(I know this is two months in a row talking about Wicca, but I think this is important)

Pre-order Trae’s new Novel Buried Memories – out December 15th!
ISBN: 9798349560958
eBook: Pre-order on Kindle / Pre-order on Kobo
Paperback: Amazon Pre-order / B&N Pre-order

Also check out the rest of Trae’s Books and visit Trae’s website.

(And, of course, don’t forget this show is part of the Nerd & Tie Network, and funded by listeners like you via Patreon. Consider joining our Discord or our forums!)

Music: “The Man With One Eye,” “So I Said It, “Untitled Nonsense” (Trae Dorn) / Random Loops (Apple Music Library)

The post 89. What Makes Wicca Wicca? first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.

When is Hanukkah this year? When is Lupercalia, or Easter, or Midsummer’s Eve? When is your birthday? Figuring out when big events happen is incredibly important, and humans have been doing it for a long time. But while we can see some similarities in the process of calendar evolution, many civilizations had very different ways of conceptualizing and measuring time. Join Em and Dr. Jesse for a discussion of non-Roman calendars!

[ Full Show Notes ]

The post 97. Non-Roman Calendars first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.

We’re still concerned with the Delta Quadrant as this episode of Casual Trek covers episodes from Modern Trek’s animated series concerning the Voyager, the Delta Quadrant and all those assorted antics. First up is the Prodigy Season One mid-season two-parter ‘A Moral Star’ where Dal and the Protostar gang plan to actually do a Starfleet with a little bit of heist antics as they try to break out the prisoners of their old home and then in Lower Decks’s ‘Twovix’ as Boimler grapples with the possibility of promotion, the crew of the Cerritos discover that when there’s an outbreak of Tuvixes, Janeway was 100% right!

Episodes Discussed – PRD: A Moral Star (06:36) and LDS: Twovix (35:35)

Talking points: Dan Dare (SPACE HYPER HERO), Hades II, the dark history of the Mushroom Kingdom, more of the Dark History of Charlie’s time with Dave’s, the one time the Holodeck safeties breaking was a good thing, Janeway is definitely cottagecore, 80s cartoons were great nostalgia, but modern cartoons do have some superior moments, Mantzoukis in Taskmaster has coloured our heroes opinion of Jakim Pog, many many references to Katamari Damacy, Janeway was right killing Tuvix, does Riker regret not having sex with his transporter clone? we make Tuvix a verb, an Americano is a Tuvix of Espresso and Water, what happens when coffee reaches Warp 10? Miles sings two seperate theme tunes.

PEDANTS CORNER: The TOS episode Miles refers to is ‘Is There In Truth No Beauty.’ Miles and his wife DO have the Katamari Damacy soundtrack on vinyl, important to know.

[ Additional Show Notes ]

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.

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The post 87. Flesh Katamari first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.

It’s time for a podcast about a podcast!

Yes, we’re talking about Star Trek: Khan, the official Star Trek podcast.

What happened between Space Seed and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan? Dr Rosalind Lear wants to know and brings some familiar faces to Ceti Alpha V to dig up some old recordings. Does she want to humanize this space tyrant or exonerate Kirk for his actions?

Flashbacks, being stranded in a hostile wilderness, Naveen Andrews… Is this Lost? Kind of. At least, it’s enough for Charlie and Miles to talk about Lost a lot, as well as serialized fiction and the plot of the first three episodes of Star Trek: Khan.

01:41 What Non-Star Trek Thing We’ve Been Enjoying:
11:33 What is Star Trek: KHAAAAAN!?
26:45 Kind of a recap

Talking points include: Lost in Space, Journey into Space, Lessons in Magic and Disaster, Charles Dickens, freelancer rates in RPGs, Tales of the City, serialized prose, we should not be so impressed that we finished a book (Miles) and a video game (Charlie), Hades, fiction podcasts, Welcome to Night Vale, Silt Verses, Wolf 359 (non-Star Trek), Are You Afraid of the Dark Universe, Lost, Alan Sepinwall “The Revolution was Televised”, Mo Ryan “Burn It Down”, Spaceballs, Khan quoting Milton (always), manifest destiny, Alien: Earth, what kind of 90’s nerd Khan would have been. Oh, and occasionally Star Trek.

[ Additional Show Notes ]

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.

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The post 86. Star Trek Khan: Lost… In Space first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.

It’s that time of year where we try and delve into the strange and scary for our Halloween episode and this time, we’ve hit upon altered states (not the Ken Russell film) where our heroes undergo a strange transformation. In the TOS episode ‘Wolf in the Fold,’ Bones’s obsession with getting Scotty laid ends in a lot of mysterious stabbings that date back to Victorian London, while in Voyager’s ‘Darkling,’ the Doctor’s attempt to improve himself by adding bits of other people into him starts making him very large in the tooth and a little too psychosexual towards Kes. Then in DS9’s ‘Empok Nor,’ O’Brien, Nog, Garak and a collection of clearly important side characters mission to a deserted Cardassian Space Station to steal some wiring ends with psychotropic drug-induced violence. Typical. Happy Halloween!

Episodes Discussed: A Wolf In the Fold (13:19) Darkling (42:06) Empok Nor (01:11:42)

Talking Points Include: The European cut of Kubrick’s ‘The Shining,’ Horror Movies, We HATE Pan and Scan, Weird UK Film edits, Bones clearly wanting to get laid, my God, they do a seance, Robert Bloch and Harlan Ellison’s twin Ripper stories in ‘Dangerous Visions,’ censorship and no Kirk shirt rip for drugs this time, Jack the Ripper in other SF franchises, no walk of shame for Kes, Picardo’s make-up leads to a lesson about old special effects, the Civilization Gandhi glitch, does Kes actually grown over her four years, CSI Tuvok, Jeremy Renner-gy, when romantic comedies have to make the rival partner an utter jerk, Robert Picardo with hair is amazing, MMMbop, Tom Waits covering Disney, ‘Cardies’ does not work as a derogatory slur, what Brighton sounds like, Garak Bashir and O’Brian probably don’t hang out at the same time, the original plan with Worf vs. Garak would not have been as fun, Nog trying too hard, ‘Bolian Dies First,’ there’s probably a meeting about Garak being a spy.

[ Additional Show Notes ]

Music by Alfred Etheridge-Nunn. Read Miles’s blog or Charlie’s blog.

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The post 85. Star Trek Halloween III – Let’s Get Scotty Laid! first appeared on Nerd & Tie Network.