After Things Podcast

The episode opens with discussion of a false emergency alert in Kleinmachnow outside Berlin about a supposed lioness. The hosts explain that police initially reacted to dark video and public reports, but later concluded the animals were wild boars, and they use the story to talk about misidentification, pattern recognition, and social contagion in sightings. The middle of the episode turns to a study on rhesus macaques in Puerto Rico. The hosts discuss reported same-sex behavior, a small heritable component, and possible evolutionary explanations such as alliance-building, increased access to females, or simple aggression/virility, while keeping the interpretation cautious. Later, the hosts cover NASA Plus, an ad-free no-cost streaming service for live mission coverage and original content, and then get sidetracked by an unexplained thumping sound that they joke may be a ghost. The episode closes with Cotard's syndrome and its nihilistic delusions, followed by the usual picks segment. In the picks segment, Ju