We celebrate our 159th with - among many Geeky things - a fast, funny tour of Star Trek’s dangling threads, from Tasha Yar’s exit to the lost “Conspiracy” arc, plus DS9’s long-game brilliance and Voyager’s resets. We field listener questions on Avengers, The Question, X-Men deep cuts, and stage a Borg Cube vs Death Star face-off. Plus, Data and the Force?

...It's Erich Von Däniken. In the 1960's a Swiss hotelier wrote a book that changed how millions see the past—and how pop culture tells stories about it. We revisit the wild trajectory of Chariots of the Gods, the “ancient aliens” hypothesis it popularized, and the uncomfortable roots that made its rise possible. Then we pull the camera back: how the Space Age, New Age mysticism, and a collapsing trust in old narratives set the stage for infotainment, speculative nonfiction, and a meme that just won’t die.

RIP Gil Gerard. A New York cab, a day job in drama class, and a shot at the 25th century: that’s the unlikely runway that launched Gil Gerard into Buck Rogers, and it still glows with neon charm. We open the vault on Gerard’s early grind through commercials, soaps, and 70s disaster flicks, then follow the thread back to Buck’s pulp origins in newspapers, radio waves, and the 1939 serials that taught America to love ray guns, zeppelins, and cliffhangers. It’s a fast, affectionate tour of the DNA that links John Carter’s planetary romance, Flash Gordon’s space opera, and Lucas-era spectacle, all converging in a TV series that dared to mix swagger with sincere camp.