The Ringer-Verse - Ringer-Verse Recommends: August 2025 (Featuring 'Foundation')

Episode Date: August 31, 2025

After a brief break, 'Recommends' returns with a revamped format, featuring a conversation between Ben and a guest about one of the month's recommendations! This time, Ben brings on Rany Jazayerli for a spoiler-free focus on sci-fi streaming series 'Foundation,' with an emphasis on the series' strengths, adaptation decisions, latest season, and future. After that, other Ringer-Verse hosts, friends, and listeners salute unsung nerd culture content to complete this expanded installment of the monthly roundup of fandom favorites from TV, anime, movies, video games, books, comics, and beyond that were released recently but not yet covered in-depth on a full-length episode. (04:35) Foundation Talk (38:21) Weapons (41:35) The Rogue Prince of Persia (42:32) Ruri Rocks (43:12) Dan Da Dan Season 2 (44:08) Herdling (46:11) Listener Recommends with Ben Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Rany Jazayerli, Jomi Adeniran, Steve Ahlman, Charles Holmes, and Daniel Chin Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Social: Jomi Adeniran Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm your friend Ben Lindbergh, host of ButtonMash and Ringiverse Recommends MC. And hey, long time, no talk, at least here at Ringiverse recommends, because we missed a month. You did not imagine it. You did not miss an episode. We missed an episode. Our apologies. There were scheduling complications. There were health complications.

Comic Con got in the way. We couldn't make the July episode. episode happen. But we're back and hopefully better than ever. I'm outside the city. I'm not in my natural habitat, but every now and then, even I need some pretty pastoral scenery. So hopefully that'll be a treat for you. Perhaps you can hear the crickets. It will be so soothing. But I'm losing the light, just like in that episode of the studio. So I'll make this quick. We took some time to think about what we want to do with Ring Reverse Recommends while we were taking our sabbatical. And we've decided to retool just a tad. We are debuting a different format this month. Much of it will be the same.

We will still give you the same recommendations and clips you know and love from your friendly ringerverse hosts. However, we have decided to do a centerpiece recommendation in each month's episode from here on out. Because although we've loved doing ring reverse recommends and it seems like a lot of you enjoy it as well, it's been missing something. There's been great participation, but a lack of interaction. Just because of the way we do these things, we each submit our clips, we're talking to you, but not to each other. And we thought maybe we could incorporate some conversation, some interaction. So each month, I will be having a more extended conversation with someone else, maybe one of the other Ringiverse hosts, maybe a friend

of the Ringiverse who will be joining me to spotlight something, to talk about something at greater length that we like, not as deep a dive as we would do on a full episode, but a lot longer and richer than we can in a couple minute clip. So this month, we will be centering and focusing on foundation, specifically Foundation Season 3. And I will be joined in just a moment by Rani Jazeerli, who's an old pal of mine and Maori going back to our Grantland days or even earlier. you might remember Rani from his contributions to Grantland and the Ringer, mostly on the sports side and the baseball side specifically, like me. That's how I got my start too. But at some point, we have to branch out to pop culture coverage. And Ranny is joining me to talk about a great streaming sci-fi series on Apple TV Plus. So we'll do that. And then we'll kick it to the clips and the recommendations. And I'll be back to transition us to that. And then I'll return at the end of the episode to recap the picks and deliver the, the, listener recommendation as usual and maybe give you a glimpse of Grumpkin because it wouldn't be Ringiverse recommends without my loyal dear Doxand showing up at some point. Another slight change,

no more trailers because we want to keep these under a certain length and with the longer front-loaded conversation, we're going to cut out the trailers. Sorry to some of you, you're welcome to others. So I will not be doing my community theater attempted to DIY trailers anymore, at least for now. I'll miss them. I enjoyed them. I'm glad some of you enjoyed them as well. Maybe we'll bring them back at some point, but we want to keep this a bit snappier and more streamlined later in the episode.

So we might as well get to it. I will tell you, even though we missed a month, I will tell you what I would have recommended last month, just because it would be a tragedy if you never knew. And of course, I would have recommended Dexter Resurrection. But you probably know that. you know I'm a Dexhead already because I recommended Dexter original sin earlier this year. Anything Dexter, I will watch and probably enjoy. So, without further ado, I'm going to bring in Ranny.

We're going to talk about foundation. And then I'll be back. Not with the full complement of Ringiverse hosts this month. We have a slightly smaller crew, but still some great clips, some great recommendations. I'm excited about this new format. Please let us know what you think. and I hope you'll check out this conversation about foundation. Well, it's time to open the vault and talk to a doctor, not a doctor of psychohistory,

but a doctor of dermatology. His name is Randy DeZerli and his nemesis is not the mule, but the mole. He forecast the future to try to stop those moles from becoming cancerous and to try to shorten the time between Kansas City sports titles once the Chief's dynasty finally falls. In a former life, he was a saber matrician, which is sort of like a psycho-historian, but for baseball. He was one of the founders of baseball prospectus, where I worked as well. And like me, he has written for Grantland and The Ringer. So we are sort of the same person, except that Rani grew up and got a real respectable job while I stay in my arrested adolescence.

One of the things we have in common is an affection for foundation, the Isaac Asimov books and the Apple T-Veev Plus streaming series, which we are here to talk about today. Rani, welcome. Thank you so much, Ben. I'm very nervous to talk to you about a subject other than sports for the first time. This isn't far from your wheelhouse either. Sci-fi. That's a specialty of yours, maybe not quite 1980s and 90s Kansas City Royals, but second best, maybe.

And we have corresponded about Foundation for years via email, via DMs, So we're taking it public here. People can actually follow along with our musings about the series. And since this is Ringiverse Recommends, we can't assume our audience has seen Foundation, shame on those of you who haven't know. We won't shame you. We will just encourage you to join us.

So we'll start with some big picture thoughts on the series, and then we can talk a bit about the current season, but steer clear of spoilers, because we hope that some of you who aren't already part of the foundation, family will take our recommendation and catch up. So Asimov writes these short stories, novellas, novels, mostly in the 1940s and 50s about the distant future of humanity. There's a galactic empire that's believed to be eternal and impregnable,

but a brilliant mathematician that Bill James of this far future named Harry Selden uses the science of psychohistory to predict that the empire is actually on the verge of collapse. So he sets up a foundation that he hopes will shorten the dark ages after the fall and rebuild civilization. So this series, this story takes place over centuries, maybe millennia, lots of characters, many moving parts. Asimov wrote some sequels decades later. The whole saga is influential. It's considered a classic, it's beloved, but it's also considered unfilmable, essentially,

untranslatable to the screen. And people tried and people failed. And along comes David S. Goyer, who is famous for his work on the Dark Night trilogy and other superhero nerd culture stuff, and he comes out with this bold plan. He's going to make a streaming series for Apple. It's going to be 80 episodes, eight seasons,

this sweeping, magnificent story, which premiered in 2021, and now we're eight episodes into the third season with two episodes to go. As I recall, you were somewhat skeptical when this was announced, as was I, as was just about everyone. Can they actually make this thing? So why were you worried and what has assuaged your concerns? So the reason I was worried was that I don't think it is hyperbole to say that this might be the most ambitious attempt to translate a book from print to the screen

that's ever been attempted. I mean, this is a galactic space opera that takes place over a thousand years. It's, I mean, it's such a big story. Isaac Asimov never finished it. I mean, that's one thing you, you know, we have to remember.

I mean, his final book, I think we were only about halfway through the thousand, year, you know, the thousand-year interregnum that Harry Seldon predicted through high psycho-history it would take for a new empire to emerge that span the galaxy. The scale of, I mean, it's essentially one novella after another, right? So it's one vignette. So the idea of filming, and not only are you talking about dozens of different planets, you're talking about new characters, every,

four or five chapters. I mean, there's hundreds, if not, you know, a thousand characters in the books that you would have to bring to life. When I read the books in the mid-80s and early 90s, you would occasionally hear rumors of like a movie potentially being adapted. And I mean, I thought that was an absolutely horrible idea. I mean, maybe it's because I had just seen the movie adaptation of Dune, the David Lynch, which, you know, valued effort, but to try and condense any kind of enormous sci-fi story into, even. three hours just seemed absurd. Yeah, and people said the same thing about a song of ice and fire and Dune and Wheel of Time and other series and things that have been adapted in recent years. I wrote a piece at the end of 2021 about how it was just the end of unfilmable, that everything that was supposedly impossible to translate now is being translated with varying degrees

of success. But foundation, I don't want to say it makes a song of ice and fire seem simple, but But in terms of just the scope of it, it is perhaps not just comparable, but also exceeds it. I mean, certainly temporally, right, in terms of time. It's way surpasses anything that George R. Martin has managed probably unless you go back to the early prehistory stuff that he's written. And I guess a common theme is not finishing a series, right? So that makes it difficult to make a good adaptation as we learned in the later seasons of Game of Thrones. Yeah.

So the thing about foundation that first made me think it could be done was simply the idea that it was being made by Apple in the era of prestige television. I was so thankful that we, after hearing about potential adaptation in the early 90, that took literally 30 years for it to come to fruition. the time, you know, we knew it was filming, I'm thinking to myself, it could work. Like, you have a trillion dollar market cap corporation behind it. And they're going to let the story breathe, right, for potentially either, but 10 hours just for essentially the first book. I thought it was possible. But the other issue with the story was that, like you said, the temporal aspect of hundreds of years. And, you know, you would have to change actors every couple of episodes. that can be done. I mean, they did that with the first season of the new House of the Dragon. Exactly. And everyone loved it.

Yeah. Exactly. But it has problems. So we started to hear what some of the changes would be. And the first thing that really caught my attention is, oh, this could actually work, was the idea of the cloned emperors. Cleon. So in the book, Cleon,

is the emperor during the lifetime of Harry Selden, but the new emperors come along in each chapter, basically. I mean, the story was supposed to be an allegory for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. I mean, Isaac Asma famously got the idea for the story. I think he was waiting to meet with John Campbell, who's famous at the ringer for his hero's journey work, but was the editor of the sci-fi magazine.

and while waiting to meet with John Campbell, he happened to peruse Edward Gibbons, decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and that's where this idea came to him. But different emperors, different leaders of foundation in each chapter, but the idea of changing it to a genetic dynasty where the original emperor Cleon created clones of himself,

and when one would die, then another one would be born to take their place, and having three emperors at the same time, just from a pure casting perspective, I just thought that was brilliant because, you know, they cast Lee Pace as the primary emperor day. And I mean, and then Jared Harris as Harry Seldon. We heard that they had kind of solved that problem of,

there will always be the same actors representing the emperors, which is a central part of the story. And then, I mean, Jared Harris and Lee Pace, I'm like, well, this is not going to suffer from an acting perspective. And it certainly hasn't. So that got me interested, certainly, that this might actually work. Yeah, anytime you put Jared Harris in a sci-fi series, it bodes well. Could be correlation, but I think it's partly causation.

So they came up with this really clever way of maintaining continuity, because the books are really about ideas more so than characters, character development, dialogue, not Asimov's strong suits, exactly. So it's more thought-provoking. and it's something that would be difficult for viewers to follow on screen if you're constantly, yeah, I mean, if you thought the time jumps in House of the Dragon were rough, then brace yourself for foundation. But they came up with this clever solution, which is that you have Leipace and his colleagues, Don and Dusk, the younger and older Cleons, who are constant. So it's different Cleons each time we jump forward, but same actor. And then Jared Harris, as Harry Selden, they've come up with ways to keep him.

in the mix, via holograms, via other convoluted story solutions. Then there's Lou LaBelle as Gail Dornick, who is a time traveler essentially in cryosleep. And so that character can be a constant. And then you have Laura Byrne as Demerzel, maybe my favorite character of the series, who is an android, who is a robot, and has been alive for thousands of years, and thus spans this whole series, too. So every season, you take a significant time jump, and that can be disorienting, but there are at least some constants. And then you get to, it's almost like a time lapse photography sort of vision of the future.

You see how the plan proceeds, but you follow it through these familiar faces, at least. And that gives you something to hold on to. Although I think, and it's both a bug and a feature, I guess, that often the seasons take some time to find their footing. just because they have leaped forward so far that they lose their balance a bit and you have to get your bearings and then typically at least in the past couple seasons they've really ramped up and hit their stride

maybe halfway through maybe a little longer than that even and then finish very strong but there is just that initial disorientation that you have to acclimate to. Yeah, there is a little bit of a Deus X Machina in terms of having Harry Selden and Gail Dornick kind of stick around.

Like sometimes you can sort of see where they had to make concessions for casting purposes. It does stretch the plot a little bit, but you understand why, because this would have been impossible otherwise. And I mean, I really think we need to emphasize the quality of the casting and acting in this show really is phenomenal. I mean, you know, if you are an incredible stage actor who speaks English, there's a good chance that your agent has gotten a call to be on the show. Because, I mean, the diversity of the cast in every way, shape, and form is incredible. And everybody is so good. I mean, I think Lou Laobo's from, she's New Zealand, I believe she's from. Laura Byrne, who might, if anybody deserves an Emmy on the show, I think it's her.

And she's Finnish. I never had seen her before. And she's, I think if I saw her acting like a human, like on down the street, I think it would totally freak me out at this point because she, like, she just embodies, like, the robotic personality. She never breaks character. So it's really an impressive feat of acting. Although this season especially has explored her quote unquote humanity or her conflict and

free will versus programming and what it would mean for her if this dynasty. were to fall, would she then be free to pursue her own aims? And that's one of those cases where it's sort of a universal theme and struggle and something everyone wrestles with, but here we're doing it through a far future robot. And it's even more poignant in a way. And just the relationship that the Cleons have with each other, knowing that their days are numbered and knowing exactly what the number of their days is, because they have this ceremony, the ascension, where the dusk Cleon is essentially vaporized and a new Don Cleon comes along. And so they're reckoning with being clones and the unnatural existence that they lead and their

relationship with Demerzel, who is sort of a mother to them and sometimes a lover. There's a Game of Thrones in here in more than one way. And also kind of a tyrant, but a confidant. And so they have this push and pull on again, off again, dynamic with her. And we get to see Lee Pace, even though he's always playing Brother Day, very different days depending on the season and the era. And this season especially, he is thriving. Just the wardrobe choices. He's not, he's leaving it all on the field.

He is chewing some scenery in the best possible way. I have to think that it's such a fun job as an actor to get to play, because like you said, they're playing a clone, but each clone,

as we learn early on, has a somewhat different personality. So they're playing a completely different character each season, you don't know that they're exactly the same person on the outside. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean,

but him, Terence Mann, Cassian Bilton, who I, this is liking his first major acting role, playing brother Don. the interaction, the chemistry between the three, because of course they are essentially,

they call each other brothers, and they're essentially clones of each other. It works really, really well. And it's interesting because some of the, some of the plots are taken directly from Asimov stories. Obviously, the mule is the classic, the most famous of his stories, and that's what they're exploring this season.

And some of it, they're making up on the fly. But I think for somebody who's coming who's coming new to the show, I think it will be difficult for you to figure out what's new and what's, what's adapted because, you know, it feels like a very cohesive plot. One thing about the show that really surprised me is how little, how little it panders to the audience in the sense of like, it doesn't explain everything. It doesn't, this is not a, you know, this is not a show that is appealing to the lowest common denominator. Like it, you, you might have to watch, you know, an episode twice to really understand what's going on. But it doesn't insult the audience at all. It's really, like, it's just, it's so nice to see when we talk about prestige TV, like prestige in this sense of it's intellectually really, it's almost too stimulating. Like, sometimes I'll finish an episode. I'm like, what just happened? And, you know, I need to go back and figure it out.

But, but I enjoy it. It's not, it's not a puzzle show in the sense of, you know, there's some sort of like big, big twist or big reveal. Well, not necessarily. There might be. But the point is just like it deals in such weighty topics as religion and free will. And, you know, this idea of, I mean, from the book's idea of psychohistory, if you can predict the future, does that mean that we all are predestined to our paths? And the tension between being able to predict the future of billions or trillions of humans, but individual humans are completely unpredictable. And I know from the books, Asimov would compare that to the laws of thermodynamics where,

any individual gas molecule, you have no idea what's going on. But we have laws of thermodynamics that can say a gas in a contained space that contains trillions or quadillions of molecules, we can predict exactly what will happen and taking that to humans. But those are the weighty ideas that this story looks into. And there aren't a lot of shows that have tried that at this scale before. Yeah. Yeah, it's ideal for me because the book's.

meant a lot to me when I read them. I read them in high school and I just consumed the whole saga and all the other related stories and books in Asimov's universe and all the robot stories. But that was so long ago and I haven't done a full reread. So I retain that fondness for them and I remember the broad strokes, but I forget some of the details. And so it's not as if I necessarily know what's going to happen next. And also they've changed things in significant ways. So it's not always one to one. And I also don't feel too precious about changes when they mix something up. I'm not saying, oh, this is different from the

book and therefore inferior. In other ways, I think it's superior and necessary to make it work on screen. And it's not just well-acted, but so well-produced and well-shot. It's just so opulent and

lavish. It's gorgeous. It's absolutely gorgeous. And in ways you've never seen before. Like, Synx, is that the water planet that Gail Dornick is from. It's an ocean planet. And then in the sky, it's like, it's got like rings, like with the rings of Saturn surrounding the planet. They never, they never referenced it at all. It's just kind of there in the background. And it's just an absolutely stunning background that is just like one scene among like a hundred different planets that you see in the shop.

Right. Just throw away things that I can't imagine how much they cost or how much effort went into them. But, but you never get the sense that they're cutting corners. It's almost avatar-esque in just its fully realized visions of these exotic alien worlds and just the sets and the wardrobes, it just seems like no expense was spared. And I wanted to wear something from Lee Pace's wardrobe this season, but I didn't think I could pull it off. First of all, he doesn't wear very much in some episodes, which is another selling point for many viewers.

Also, this season, he's coming out there with bathrobes and sandals and undershirts and shorts, but I don't think I could pull it off the way that Lee Pace did, so I haven't tried. But yeah, it's a beautiful series. And I've written about recently how a lot of sci-fi now, it's just sort of an homage to the 70s, because you have something like Andor or Alien Earth or Blade Runner 2049,

these things that are following those formative, you know, the original Star Wars and Alien and Blade Runner. And so they look like that. They're sort of frozen in time. And those are great series and movies, and I welcome that. But foundation looks like its own thing. And just every shot of a spacecraft, you know, approaching a planet or it's beautiful. It's almost, I guess, 2001, a space odyssey, sort of, just in its majestic.

Right. Plus 60 years of CGI and special effects. I mean, it's kind of appropriate because you mentioned the 70s, but like we know that George Lucas with Star Wars, I mean, foundation was an inspiration for a lot of Star Wars. I mean, Corrason, right? Corrassant, which is, you know, like a planet-spanning metropolis. He lifted that directly from Trantor, the train tour that you see in this show. If it looks kind of like a Star Wars derivative, no, no, it's the other way around. Star Wars took the idea from here. Hyperspace, right?

Asimovic, I mean, you know, all sci-fi writers had to come up with some sort of conceit to allow for faster than light travel. But essentially, hyperspace was invented the idea by Asmov, and that's how they travel. And in the very first episode, I mean, I remember literally having, because the anticipation for the show for me, it was like, please don't suck, please don't suck. Whatever you do, please don't suck. And, you know, 20 minutes in, there is that first moment where ship goes into hyperspace. And I think David, David, as Gore has talked about, like, how they had to, like, almost get permission for able to spend, like, extra amounts of money for that, for, because they wanted that first, you know,

scene of like, this is space, this is outer space to look majestic. It just, it blew my mind. I really had to pause. I had to pause a show for a moment because it just hit me and like, oh my God, this is, this is, this is, this could actually be good. And it was almost,

it was almost too much for me after all these years of anticipation. So, yeah, it's a gorgeously shot show. Yeah. That's almost my concern. That's one of the things that I love. about the series, and yet that's what makes me worried that it won't come to fruition. It just, it costs too much. It's too ambitious because Goyer came out with this plan.

It's going to be 80 episodes. We're going to tell the whole story, the whole sweep and scope of history. Well, this was developed in 2017, ordered in 2018, premiered in 2021. This was a very different time for prestige TV, for streaming series. even Apple, which has been the most free spending of the companies and willing to burn millions or billions of dollars on these series, much to my benefit, because I've enjoyed many of them, but it doesn't always translate to popularity ratings. and Foundation has an audience, but it's not a breakout hit. It's not a mainstream sensation.

And so that makes me worried, just because even Apple has pulled back a bit on the spending, and that has affected Foundation directly because Goyer, who was the architect of this whole series, there was a bit of a dispute before this season, a conflict over budget, and Goyer has stepped down as showrunner. He's still very involved in the series.

He's still written a lot of episodes this season, but he's no longer the showrunner, and that came after. Presumably the budget was slashed, though it's hard to tell on the screen. It doesn't look a lot cheaper than it ever did. But behind the scenes, there's been some conflict about it that. It took a while at least for season three, the renewal to be announced.

Season four has not been greenlit yet as far as we know. And so I can't help but fret as much as we like this series and as good as it is and as many fans as it has that it might be heading for a similar fate as the novels and the series and perhaps this two will be unfinished. And so that scares me. Yeah, no, 100%. And as much as, you know, I was worried about the budget being cut, like you said, I've been looking for signs of like, you know, the seam showing. and, you know, maybe the special effect, maybe the CGI is a little off, but I don't feel it. And look, if lowering the cost of the, you know, lowering the budget keeps the show on the air, I am all for that tradeoff. You know, I was, we, it was touch and go as to whether we get season three, as you know, and like, especially because we knew they'd set it up so that the mule would be season three.

I'm just so grateful we are at least getting this, this season on screen. But right now I'm operating under the exception. We may not get a season four. And sometimes shows do best when like every season could be its last. And there's almost like a sense of urgency that goes with it. But, you know, I'm trying to be glass half full here and say, even if we don't get another season, even if this is it and we have like two more episodes left, the fact that we got this is still a monumental achievement that I just never expected I would see on the screen.

let alone of this higher quality. But, you know, I would, I would, you know, strangle a small puppy if that's what it would take. You know, Game of Thrones style here now. If that's what it would take to, you know, to ensure, you know, the full eight season arc or even like two or three more, enough to at least get through some of the stories that Asimov told in the books and maybe explore a little bit beyond, you know, what those,

where those went and get to kind of some sort of conclusion about like the end of empire. in the books, the empire does eventually end, and it's basically a foundation in a void that's left over. And they could explore that. I mean, there's still such fertile territory for someone to continue the stories. So I hope we hear soon that they are renewing for season four. When you ask me to come on, one of the things I want to do is make sure as many people, we encourage as many people as possible to watch the show because it really is worth continuing.

And, you know, I do feel like not enough people are aware that they show even exists, but everyone I've turned on to it has been, at the very least, impressed with it. Yeah. You know, there's definitely a lot of admiration. I don't know how much of it is love, but definitely people are happy that it exists. Yeah. Hashtag save foundation. Yeah, it's not for everyone.

I guess it can be slow-paced at times. I find it very absorbing, but there's not always a ton of action necessarily. sort of cerebral. But yes, it will impress you, I think, right off the bat. I would say season two was an improvement over season one, especially just the latter half of season two. That was just all bangers basically from episode. Season two, I think, for my money, it's the greatest episode of science fiction television

I have ever seen. I mean, I just, you know, there's almost like two similes. you get a combination of like incredible reveals a backstory at the beginning of the episode and by the end there's a twist that we didn't have in the books that I'm sure you are as like did that is that actually happening? Did you have that kind of reaction as I did?

But it made sense within the confines of the plot where they were taking the story. And again, gorgeously shot and the special effects were I'm sure extremely expensive. It went where no other shows. show I think has ever gone, at least from the sci-fi level. So if you start it and you feel like it's a slow burn at the beginning, get to the end of season two, because like around the middle of season two, it really does take a turn for the better,

I think. Yeah, and that was a tough act to follow. And season three has been strong. I would say it's not maintaining that level of the last couple episodes of season two, but we do have two more episodes to go. So pull out your prime radiant here, and we won't get to. granular or spoilery, but this season as a whole, it has centered this conflict between Gail and Harry and the Mule, who is this mutant who can control minds and persuade people to not just do his

bidding, but love him against their will, essentially. And so he basically breaks psychohistory, or that's the fear, at least, that he is the exception to the rule that you can predict, you know, people in large numbers, but individuals can't affect the course of history. He is something that even seldom hadn't planned for initially. And so they've been building up this conflict now almost essentially from the beginning of the series and for hundreds of years in the in-universe timeline, this showdown that we've seen teases of visions of since before this season started. And now it's all kind of coming to a head.

The Mule, another Game of Thrones comp played by the actor who played. You're on Greyjoy. So he's doing some scenery chewing of his own. This is a little bit different from previous seasons in that the nemesis is not just the inevitable decline of civilization and entropy, but this villain, this big bad, basically, who can bend people to their will.

So it's a little bit of a different look for the series. There is a potential twist that perhaps book readers have identified here. We don't know whether that will happen. They've kind of been cagey about whether it will happen, and so we won't spoil anything there. But how has this conflict worked for you this season as a whole, and are your hopes high for the final two episodes? My hopes are high.

I am a little bit nervous, but if they are taking this in the direction that I hope that they, and even before the season, you and I had a discussion, and I had a theory as to how they were playing this. If they go in that direction, I think it will be absolutely burlyly put together. Because what frustrated me from the first two seasons was that they tipped their hand so early, so early, about the existence of the mule with these sort of premonitions

that Gail Dornick was having, as well as the existence of the second foundation, which in the book was a couple. Both of those things were not addressed at all in the first, I think, book or book and a half of Asimov stories, in part because I don't think he had come up with the idea for the second foundation. And he kind of, you know, kind of retconned it halfway through writing this. Yeah. And it's different because, you know, the early seasons, it's far future and it's technology that's indistinguishable for magic. But it's also, it's grounded in science, whereas now it's this chance. challenge to the science of psychohistory is mentalics and empaths and people who have seemingly

supernatural abilities. So it's, that was something that Game of Thrones was always at war with itself. Is it going to be just straight up fantasy or is there going to be magic? And often the adapters at least would shy away from that aspect of things, much to the dismay of the people who hosted the podcast whose shirt you are wearing right now, our friends, Nauri and Jason. So this is a little more

not just sci-fi but also a little supernatural, right? Which is a different aspect to the series that they've been setting up for some time. Right. But when they brought, when they sort of previewed the existence of the mule,

I have to be careful here, not to reveal anything, but it just, it's, it struck a sour note with me because I felt like they were playing their hand too soon, but I wonder, now if they knew exactly what they were doing and essentially

they were running a three-season con on all of us. I think you know as somebody who's, like if you've read the stories, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And if you haven't, then you have no idea what I'm talking about. And that's fine. But we'll find out in the next two weeks. I'm very curious to see how they play this. They've definitely left,

there was certainly one conversation one piece of dialogue in the middle of season three that I think at the end of the season, anybody, even if you've never read the books and had no idea, if you go back and watch that conversation, it's hiding in plain sight. So I think they're setting us up for what I think will be an incredible twist. But I'm not certain.

And I really hope I'm right. Well, selfishly, we want this series to continue. So please go watch it. take us at our words. If you haven't tried the series already, then please do. There is a lot to recommend it as we just did. So we didn't talk about the Kansas City Royals. We talked about some royals, at least. We covered a lot of ground here. We could probably discuss this series for hours more, but hopefully we'll have another opportunity to if there is not a third seldom crisis if this series is not canceled and if we get a season four. So thank you, Rani. This was

a joy. Thank you for having me on. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech. Everyone knows winter is the MVP and make it a mess. You don't need WeatherTech floor liners in the summer, unless you hit the beach or go camping. Then you'd want a cargo liner or a road trip goes sideways. Ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need Weather Tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. The playoffs are here, and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul

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Learn more at clinickids.com slash 100K. That's Clinic with a K. Linne Kits is a registered 5-101C3 nonprofit. All right, it's Ben back again. I have moved to yet another location. We're switching up the scenery on this episode. I'm rejoined by my trusty Dox and Grumpkin. Thanks for listening to the Foundation discussion, if you did.

And we've got much more for you. More recommendations to come. I'm just here to tee them up. Let's roll the clips. Hey, this is Daniel Shin, and this month I am recommending Zach Krueger's latest horror movie weapons. Now, if you haven't seen this movie yet, I will not give away too many details in this recommendation because I do not want to spoil it for you.

I think this is a movie that you're going to want to go in fresh. It takes many unexpected twists and turns, has a very chaotic energy to it. But the basic premise of it is 17 children from the same third grade class in Maybrook, Pennsylvania, all run away on the the same night at the exact same time. And the movie investigates the mystery of what's happened to them. You might have seen these kids doing this eerie Naruto-style run in the middle of the night in trailers or on billboards. I'm really hoping that Ben has reenacted this for the video.

I will be finding out when you guys do. But the movie has a great cast that includes Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Benedict Wong, and many of us. others. And much like Craigor's previous film, Barbarian, it's definitely a scary movie, but it's also really funny. Craigar has a background in comedy, and it shows in this film and both of his films, but especially in weapons, there is such a natural relationship between horror and comedy, where the genres can really feed off of each other when done right, with the tension that builds up from these moments of terrifying suspense and the

release that comes from from laughter and being able to derive humor out of these dramatic, absurd situations. Craigor has really already proven that he has mastered this as a filmmaker. And he's going to be a name that you're going to want to look out for in the years to come, especially in this nerd culture space that we cover here in the ringer verse. Next year, he is coming out with a reboot of Resident Evil that he has written and directed, which sounds like the perfect combination to revitalize this beloved video game franchise on the big screen. He has also apparently written an original scripts set in the DCU called Henschman,

which if that ever comes to fruition, could be a really interesting part of the reboot, the relaunch of the DCU. And he, yeah, he's going to be somebody you're going to want to look out for, and weapons is a great place to start. The movie came out on August 8th, so I don't know how much longer it's going to be in theaters, but I do recommend that you try to catch it in theaters before it goes, because there really are few cinematic experiences quite like seeing horror movies like weapons, where people just, they can't help themselves with the visceral reactions that they're having to,

the jump scares or just the sheer absurdity that, that, that, has been able to show both in Barbarian and in weapons. So I highly recommend going to see this in theaters. But yeah, go check out weapons before it goes. Hey, Ringover's Recommends. Steve Allman here with your recommend for this month. I'm going to say that my recommendation is going to be one of my favorite video game genre is rogue likes.

And my recommendation is going to be the rogue prince of Persia. They basically made one of the best underrated video game franchise. into a rogue like. You play as the Prince of Persia who is fighting a battle to save his city. And a great, like, addition to this is a lot of, if you've ever been playing dead cells or any of these other great action platforming roguelikes, you pick between three power-ups, progress through a level, you have little power-ups along the way. It's really, really great. And the platforming is kind of sensational. Music is a banger. Art style is really, really cool. and you've had hours and hours of fun with this,

along with all the other great games out there that came out this week, don't forget to check out Rogue Prince of Persia. My Ring or Verse Recommends is an anime on Crunchyroll called Rory Rocks. It is about a young girl and I believe a graduate student

who's a geologist, and that sounds crazy because it is just a story of falling in love with geology and molten rocks and gold and and everything that you find in rivers and mineral beds. And it sounds very boring, but it's very sweet.

It's very wholesome. It is something that I like to watch every week when I just kind of need to calm down and zone out. And I've learned a lot about geology and rocks. So my Ringervis Recommends is Rory Rocks, available on Crunchyroll. What's up, Ringaverse recommends? It's your boy, Jomi. And this month, I'm recommending Don to Don Season dose. Gigi's here.

He's got powers too. Listen, the whole thing's popping off. Y'all know me. Y'all know I love my romance. And Momo and my gut-eckle-room, and they make it happen. You see when they touch their hands in the car? Ah, I was going to be crazy. So make sure you are locked in on one of the best animates of this season.

I mean, like, listen, there's, I want to recommend so much to y'all, but we're just going to start with Dad and Dance Season 2. We're going to jump all the way into the deep end. Then we can see if y'all can handle my dress-up darling or I can't even. Let me not even. Let me just, let's just stick to Don and Don season two for now because it's going to get crazy if I start going off. Make sure you're watching Dan and then season two.

Lock in. Hello, Ringerverse. It's Matt James, the deputy art lead here at the Ringer and frequent button mash guest. Happy belated National Dog Day to all who celebrate. This is my dog Toro. He's a mini Aussie, which is a herding dog, which is why he's been enjoying watching me play my recommendation for this month, a game called Herdling, which is out now on PS5, Steam and Xbox.

It is free on Game Pass. And in Herdling, you play a shepherd who rescues and escorts wild beasts, kind of like this guy, but not quite as cute, obviously. Much like Sword of the Sea, a game that we went over, on Button Mesh this week. Herbling has no dialogue in it, but it still manages to tell a really moving story with amazing music and stunning environments,

and it's really relaxing to play, and you can finish it in one or two sittings. And I was a bit concerned that controlling this game would be difficult, managing a herd as it gets to like 10 wild beasts would become unwieldy, but the controls are really great, and none of the animals are ever trying to break away or anything. So it's a pretty stress-free experience.

I guess it's kind of like a walking simulator in some way. Is it like a pro-walking simulator? There's some engaging environmental design that really adds some depth to the experience. Herdling has some subtle things to say about our relationship with nature and how the journey we're on. on together is a bit brighter when we band together, right? Don't you think?

So if you're too scared to go outside and touch grass, you can at least boot up herdling and run around some fields with your best wild beast buds. And yes, if you're wondering, you can name all of them, and you can feed them, and you can pet them. Hurdling, check it out. All right, it's Ben back again, ready to bring this thing home. Grum has retired to her bed. as you can probably see at the edge of her frame. So I don't want to keep her up any longer.

I am here to recap the recommendations you just heard, deliver a listener recommendation, and then bid you goodbye until next month. So you heard me and Randy DeZerli talk about Foundation Season 3, which you can and should stream on Apple TV Plus. Daniel Chin recommended the major motion picture weapons, which I also co-sign. I saw it in theaters.

You should too. Jomi was here to recommend Dan to Dan yet again. This is his second time recommending Dan to Dan. You've got to take him up on it if you haven't already. Season 2 is out. And of course, Charles, the anime and manga master. True to Form picks a crunchy roll show himself, Ruri Rocks. And then we had a couple of video game recommendations

from Steve Alman, the rogue prince of Persia, and from Matt James, hurdling. Okay, so we accept, we solicit, we welcome, monthly listener nominations for these episodes at ringerverse recommends at gmail.com, please do keep them coming. And because I feel bad that we missed July and I don't want people's recommendations from last month to go to waste. And because we had fewer clips than usual at the end of this episode, I'm going to give you three listener recommendations,

which we received for last month's show. But hey, they're evergreen. They're still good. They're still out there for you to enjoy. So I'm going to start with Anders, who writes, for the month of July, I'd like to recommend the series Nautilus on AMC Plus, a prequel series detailing the early days of Captain Nemo and the Nautilus. The show is structured very much like a Star Trek series, sold, with the crew coming across various beasts and villains each week, all the while trying to outrun the East India Company. The show has a decent comedic tone alongside its drama, with interesting characters in beautiful locations, as the Nautilus makes it from island to island, overcoming both natural and engineering challenges in the quest for freedom and knowledge of the seas.

I highly recommend denial of us to anyone searching for some adventure and escapism. I'm intrigued. I still watch Walking Dead on AMC. As you all know, Darrell Dixon, about to be back yet again. Read plenty of Jules Verne in my day. Next recommendation comes from Tom Sheponsky, who says, for the month of July, I would like to recommend Three Shattered Souls, the final book in Broolnski. Broken Blades trilogy by May Corland. The series is very loosely inspired by Korean myth and tells

the story of deadly people on a mission to kill the God King June. Their adventure sets them up on a path to discovering long-lost secrets, love, betrayal, and found family that culminates in them being the unlikely centerpiece of world events by the end of the trilogy. Beyond the story, the books also have beautiful artwork on the inside covers as well as on the pages themselves, making them a book you might want to have facing the wrong way on your shelf. If you are looking for a fast-paced fantasy series that you can now read in its entirety, I recommend the Broken Blades trilogy. Start with five Broken Blades, then four ruined realms,

before culminating in the newly released three Shattered Souls. Finally, Pearson says, 15 years after the release of season one, season two of the anime series Panty and Stocking, a.k.a. New Panty and Stocking is finally here. New Panty and Stocking comes to us courtesy of Studio Trigger, recently the creators of the hit anime, Cyberpunk Edge Runners and Delicious in Dungeon.

After a shocking ending to season one, our Angel Sisters Panty and Stocking are back and continuing to behave badly and slay ghosts in Dayton City, all while parodying our favorite Western cartoons and media. Our no-nonsense Reverend Garter Belt and Ghost Hunter Brief are also back, along with Season 2 bringing us two new Angel brothers, polyester and polyurethane. It has been another wild ride.

Sounds like it. To those interested, it should be made clear, despite being an anime, this series leans into a lot of adult swim-type humor and language and has heavy Western influences. And being a parody of cartoons while using a Western art style, the original English dub is what makes the show a standout. Unfortunately, and you can blame Amazon here,

the original English cast is no longer here for season two. I was a bit worried when I saw the first trailer, but these worries have been laid to rest, at least for me, as the new English dub is still fantastic. I'm more of a subs overdubs guy, but to each his own. New Panty and Stocking is as wacky as ever,

fresh with modern references and can be watched on Prime Video. Those who want to catch up on the 13 episodes of season one can do so on Crunchyroll, though for those who want to jump into season two, season one isn't necessarily required viewing. It's an episodic show for the most part,

and season two quickly catches you up on everything you need to know. Well, thank you again to Anders and Tom Staponsky and Pearson Keep your recommendations coming for future months to ringerverse recommends at gmail.com. And that will do it for the August edition. We thank you, as always, for listening and participating. I thank you, Steve Alman, for producing this episode as well as submitting a nomination for it,

and to our Druna Remgo-Pal for helping me brainstorm this new format and supporting the new revamped Ringervverse recommends. stay tuned for coverage on the Ringiverse House of Our of Peacemaker and Alien Earth and a comics catch-up and Hollow Night Silk Song and Borderlands Four coming to Buttonmash soon. So so much to look forward to and so much to look forward to in September as well. And we will be back next month to recommend much of it, anything that we can't cover in a full-length episode on the feed. We will hit here. And until then, I hope that you will recommend the ringerverse. Feels like every product claims real protein these days.

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