This week on What the Frock?, Rabbi Dave and Friar Rod climbaboard a metaphorical trireme and sail straight into the stormy waters of myth, movies, technology, and modern madness. Somewhere between Homer’s Odyssey, Star Trek, Star Wars, UFO files, malfunctioning computers, and the increasinglyterrifying future of artificial intelligence, the pair attempt to answer a question humanity has apparently been wrestling with since bronze-age Greece: are we steering the ship, or are the gods just moving us around like puppets in an amphitheater?

Along the way, Dave finds himself tempted by the digitalSirens promising faster processors and quieter fan noise, while Friar Rod calmly watches the chaos unfold with the patience of a monk who has seen this exact nonsense before. There are reflections on storytelling, the decline of modern filmmaking, the strange comfort of old science fiction, and the growingsuspicion that maybe Homer understood human nature better than Silicon Valley does.

It is funny, skeptical, occasionally philosophical, and justunhinged enough to feel strangely accurate. In other words, it is another perfectly normal voyage aboard the good ship What the Frock?, sailing proudly across the wine-dark sea of modern civilization.