In this episode, the derailment begins before we’ve even settled in — welcome back to Out of Context Weekly Scenarios. This week’s curiosities arrive in two very different flavours: Imran sits down for his first-ever poker game, only to be completely derailed by watching Troy Parrott score for Ireland mid-hand, narrating the moment with such ecstatic disbelief you’d swear he’d just won the World Series of Poker. Meanwhile, Shaun finds himself strong-armed into making egg fried rice at his nannie’s house, moving around her kitchen with the frantic precision of a man following instructions shouted from three different generations at once.

Our Topic of the Week drifts into the quiet magic of the everyday: the power of small gestures. We explore how the simplest acts — a message, a favour, a shared moment of attention — can shift the atmosphere of a day, patch over distance, or deepen the kind of care that doesn’t need to announce itself.

Then, in Pop Culture & Current Affairs, we turn our attention to Ireland’s hopes of qualifying for the World Cup — what feels possible, what feels precarious, and why the dream still pulls at something collective, stubborn, and hopeful.

And finally, we close with Your Distance Dilemmas — real listener stories of friendship, communication, and the blurry terrain between drifting apart and circling back.

As always, it’s just the two of us — chatting nonsense, diving into the serious moments, and tracing that winding line between laughter and the things that hold us together.