What?  Do my ears deceive me?  Is that Helix Nebula I hear?  It can’t be?  A new Blue Yonder?!  Yes, while it is true that we put BY in mothballs to concentrate on TV casting, every once in a while we feel the need to cut loose and get a little old-school, off-topic ranty, and our brief off-season has provided us just such an opportunity.  If you’re a fan of our TV-focused casts, like Breaking Good or Watching Dead, there’s probably not a lot for you here, but if you like general geek/gaming topics you might enjoy it.  For all of our old, die-hard fans, welcome back! Join Jim and A.Ron as we discuss just what the hell we’ve been up to the past four months and our latest gaming endeavors (including Settlers of Catan, Stratego, Battles of Westeros, Batman Arkham City, and of course, Skyrim).  We rant about the ludicrous situation that downloadable patches and locked save games has brought to us, talk a little bit of TV (of course), reminece about our Great War with Personal Arrogants, and read the last feedback we got on the cast way back in August.  Jim gives an update on our experiment with a “listener sourced cast”.  Finally, A.Ron fulfills a promise to donate some cash to his favorite charity, Child’s Play. As always, if you like what we do, give us a shout out!  You can email, Tweet, or Facebook us.  Give us some lovin’ by leaving us an iTunes review and especially by using our Amazon affiliate link for any and all of your Amazon shopping needs.  Remember, it costs you nothing, and sends a little “sumpin’ sumpin”‘ our way.  Win/win!

In this week’s show, A.Ron and Jim ponder some science, philosophy, pop culture and politics through the lens of SCIENCE!  First up, a research paper opens up the debate about spoilers we first had way back in episode 62, with a new study suggesting that reading pre-spoiled books is more enjoyable than reading them spoiler-free.  So take your spoiler tag, shine it up real nice, turn it sideways, and cram it up your candy ass! Next comes another study that boldly asserts that once just 10 percent of a given population holds an unshakable belief in an idea, that it is inevitable that idea will take over the majority of the same population.  This might have some potential applications in podcasting!  We just need another 700 million listeners!  We are so close! Jim and A.Ron briefly discuss Jim’s thoughts on GENCON, and we look forward to PAX next week.  Then, we have some bittersweet news to drop on you, as we announce that Blue Yonder will be going on hiatus in the coming weeks.  We’re not stopping podcasting!  Hell, no, we’re just off general geekery and we’re on to our other passion, television.  If you’re a fan of Breaking Bad, we’d love it if you followed us over at our new project, Breaking Good. And if you still can’t get enough geek and pop culture, we cannot recommend our frienemies over at Personal Arrogants enough.  We never knew that when we started shit with them, oh so many months ago, that we’d find such dependable foils as well as friends.  Jim and I (gemini) are huge fans, and we feel like if you give them a shot, you’ll like them as well if not better than our cast.  They also have the virtue of not going off the air!  So there’s that. If you’d like to share any fond memories you’ve had of the cast with us, email them in!  For every piece of feedback we get, A.Ron is donating $5 to Child’s Play, up to a maximum of $500.  We’re doing a final, very special episode 77 where we reminisce about the last year, and give our final State of the Geek address before signing off.  We still hope to do a joint cast with the PA crew in Seattle if they’re up for a 1 week reunion tour!  See you next week!  I’ll bring the kleenex!  Ew, god, not like that.

We are back after last week’s hiatus.  Honestly, I’m heartbroken we lost the Jim Jones Experiment.  It was an hour long mind fuck of yours truly by Jim Jones, and it was weird, it was uncomfortable, it was hilarious by the end, and it would have been legendary, and then Jim deleted it, with no backups.  Because, I dunno?  Mac people don’t make good backups.  I guess? No use crying over spilled podcasts.  Jim actually is sick, as is his post-convention custom (he has the immune system of a baby bird.  A baby birds with full blown AIDS) so Mad Brew from Mad Brew Labs graciously stepped in to do a wrap up, Blue Yonder style.  We discuss the awesome, the lame, and the fun games we played this weekend. We talk specifically about Fantasy Flights new Star Wars Mini Space Battles game, Battles of Westeros, Blood Bowl Team Manager, MERCS minis, Third and Long: The Football Card Game, WarMachine, Epic Armory, and lots more. If you are a Pathfinder fan, be sure to check out Michael’s online character generator, Venture Captain.  It’s free and totally awesome.   [ratings]

GENCON, the “best four days in gaming”, is coming to our humble home town of Indianapolis next week.  We invited Michael “Madbrew” Brewer back on to give some tips for what to look for in this years convention, how to navigate the expo hall, potential new releases, and what you can safely avoid.  If you missed last year’s GenCon preview with Michael, you might want to give it a listen, as he discussed a lot more general GENCON survival tips, and his love for RPGs. We’ll be out there for all four days, so if you’re going to be around, shout us out on Twitter or email, and say “hi” or come game with us!  You can get in touch with Michael over at his blog Mad Brew Labs, or his new Pathfinder character generator, Venture Captain.  He’ll also be cosplaying as Chun Li at GENCON this year, so hit him up on Twitter if you want a pose with him.  (NOTE: Not actually true.)

Busy week for A.Ron and Jim. A.Ron breaks down his various trials and tribulations including a Jim Jones mindfuck, a breakup, getting his PANFI on with his boy, and golfing in Satan’s Asshole. We also launched a very successful podcast on Breaking Bad, and were interviewed on The Amazingly Pulp SHOOOOOOOWWWWWW!! We bring the listeners up do date with some follow up to the male privelidge aspect of our cast with Madbrew last week. I don’t know what to make of this take, in particular, of a feminist pondering male privildge through the prism of her own white privlidge. I don’t doubt the basic truth of her premise, but I’m not sure what to do with this information. We get excited about the upcoming GENCON and PAX events in August, and the breeding habbits of werecabbages. And that’s just the bullshit! The meat is formed from an article at Wired about the new video game based “religion” of Chain World. We cover the twists, turns, and wheels within wheels turning within this story. Jim challenges you, the listener, to try and pervert and annoy us with our very own cast, and releases a vast swath of our show’s library under the Creative Commons license to facilitate this. Then we lose our shit over a video two harpies and a man without testicles or common sense made about it not being normal for men in their 30s and beyond to play video games. This leads to a larger discussion of relationships and gender privilege. Jim previews the upcoming mindfuck episode, and then we half-ass listener feedback. If you liked this week’s episode, drop us a line! You can also follow us on Twitter, and our Facebook page. Love us, like us, follow us! If you appreciate what we do, consider leaving us an iTunes review. And don’t forget our forums!   [ratings]

This week we bring back Michael “Madbrew” Brewer from MadBrewLabs for a three man debate about insane co-workers, assholes in RPGs, gaming culture, inclusiveness, women and minorities in gaming, who has rights to our friendships, and what we can or should do about our White/Straight/CIS/Male Privilege. Michael also entertains us with some Stories from the Service that he collected in his four years of serving in the US Marine Corps.  Don’t forget to check out his RPG blog, MadbrewLabs, and his new Pathfinder character generator, Venture Captain. If you liked this week’s episode, drop us a line!  You can also follow us on Twitter, and our Facebook page.  Love us, like us, follow us! If you appreciate what we do, consider leaving us an iTunes review.  And don’t forget our forums!   [ratings]

Jim and A.Ron always pay their debts.  We owe you a cast, and today we deliver on that promise.  We talk about Florence + The Machine, Battle for Hill 218 (free online version), Battlestar Galactica (board game AND series), that fantastic new HBO series “Game of Thrones” that just finished up it’s first season, A.Ron’s revolutionary idea for a “sincerity” movement, and the surprising news that Kickstarter is the 3rd largest independent comic book publisher. We finish up with Jim sharing his love for Tim Minchin, some listener feedback, a podcaster pledge, and of course, Stafa’s Corner.  If you liked this week’s episode, drop us a line!  You can also follow us on Twitter, and our Facebook fan page.  If you appreciate what we do, consider leaving us an iTunes review.  And don’t forget our forums!   [ratings] Jim wanted me to share another link to the free online Dominion game system too.  If you’re into that kind of thing…

The write up for this one is going to be short and sweet, folks, because the content is long and savory.  We finally aligned technology and schedules and sat down with Ian for a talk about all things geek, legal, and lawery.  Want to know what it’s like to argue before the Supreme Court? What it’s like to be an Omeganaut at PAX?  How to fight back against unfair IP law?  If emulators are legal?  How much energy the Death Star took to destroy Alderaan?  We talk about it.  At length. As a bonus, we have a full transcript of the interview and a “highlight reel” version here.  Hope you enjoy!  We’ll be having Ian on in the future, so if you have follow up questions, drop us a line!  You can also follow us on Twitter, and our Facebook fan page.  If you appreciate what we do, consider leaving us an iTunes review.  And don’t forget our forums!  It’s where all the cool kids hang out. [ratings]

This is a terrible cast.  I honestly wouldn’t listen to it, if I were you.  I mean, I gotta keep it real, right?  I can’t say how awesome our casts are and it mean anything and then drop a turd and talk it up, yeah?  Yeah. Thing is, I’m not sure why it flopped on it’s face.  We had some good bullshit up front; pimping the Brew Ha Ha, advances in metallurgy, saying a happy birthday to Alan Turing, and talking about Terry Prachett’s dignity in making end of life decisions.  A.Ron plugs one of his favorite twitter feeds, @humblebrag. For our meat, Jim discusses whether or not Super 8 brought back fond memories of Spielberg’s innocent sci-fi movies of the 80s, and A.Ron ponders what the recent tidal wave of hacking means for security and privacy in the future.  I dunno, seems like a decent cast.  But it totally wasn’t. If you want to break down where we went wrong, Zapruder film style, drop us a line back, and to the left. Back… and to the left.   Unleash your venom at us on Twitter, flame us on our  Facebook fan page, or give us a terrible review on iTunes.  Don’t forget our forums!  Any hate you spew there stays forever, permanently etched into our SQL database.  All I ask… is for you to be gentle.

The guys release ultra-devastating power on the unsuspecting listeners this week.  First, A.Ron is incredulous with Jim’s shunning of the fantastic game, Angry Birds (now free on Chrome!), talks about how awesome Infamous 2 is, and declares that  X-Men: First Class blows the lid off the Bacon game for a whole new generation. And that’s just the bullshit!  For this week’s meat, A.Ron goes BMT with a discussion of how to succeed in IT without even trying, or how to extort your former employers for fun and profit.  Jim asks if there is a rise in geek anti-intellectualism?  I don’t know about all that, but I sure do get tired of hearing Jim throwing around his fancy goddamn $20 words.  We close with some listener feedback, and what could be the most baffling Stafa’s corner yet. If you’d like to flex your intellectualism, drop us a line, give us a shout on Twitter, leave us some feedback on our  Facebook fan page, or review us on iTunes.  Don’t forget our forums, they’re the most groovy, swinging place this side of Kevin’ Bacon’s Hellfire Club!   [ratings]