The Incomparable Mothership
Hosted by Jason Snell
The Incomparable Mothership is the flagship of the Incomparable podcast network. It’s all about geeky media we love, including movies, books, TV, and more, featuring a rotating panel of guests and hosted by Jason Snell and friends.
829 The True Horror is Bureaucracy
Put on your summer best and board a ferry to New England’s hottest tourist destination! It’s time for us to discuss “Widow’s Bay,” a funny horror story about the mayor and other denizens of a cursed island. Of course there’s a creepy clown, and a slasher, and a dark secret that goes back centuries. Of course Stephen Root is wild-eyed! Once you visit Widow’s Bay, you’ll never want to leave… which is good, because you might not be able to.
Previous Episodes
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July 31, 2026 “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World”828 Perfectly Serviceable Boat Movie
It’s one of the best “Star Trek” movies, a classic Dad Movie, and the start of a franchise that never really started. It’s “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” in which oceans have become battlefields and privateer ships lurk like horror-movie monsters. Don’t get attached to any of those nice young sailors!
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July 24, 2026 ”The Odyssey”
827 Organic Free-Range Cave Cheese
Non-linearly begin and end your journey across a wide range of cursed islands! We discuss Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” a film now in theatres and a story that’s (nearly) 3,000 years old! Pig sculpting! Lotus eating! Horrible horse hiding! Were we the sea people all along? That’s a tale as old as time.
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July 17, 2026 2026 Awards Book Club, Part 3826 Layers of Shenanigans
Our awards shortlist book club rolls on with a selection of books we’re much more receptive to: “A Drop of Corruption” by Robert Jackson Bennett, “The Raven Scholar” by Antonia Hodgson, and The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow.
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July 10, 2026 “Project Hail Mary”
825 3D Printing With Xenon
What if “The Martian” but with an alien buddy? We break down “Project Hail Mary,” and marvel at what a good translation of a sort-of-unfilmable book it really is! Why do we love alien puppets so much? Why is Jason checking his watch at the end? We give this movie a thumbs down—by which we mean we liked it! Amaze amaze amaze!
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July 3, 2026 “Independence Day” (1996)
824 The Most Movie
Get out your PowerBooks and prepare to punch an alien in patriotic fashion! We celebrate Independence Day with a 30-year-old film, “Independence Day”! It’s a lot of movie. Is Jason ready to forgive it?
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June 26, 2026 Star Trek Movie crossover draft823 Someone on Both Sides of the Gunfight
We combine our love of “Star Trek” with the appreciation for old movies that can only be provided by our sister podcast Lions, Towers, and Shields, by drafting “Star Trek” actors (TOS and TNG only) and the movie roles we loved before they appeared on Star Trek!
And be sure to listen to this summer’s LTS’s Star Trek summer event.
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June 19, 2026 “Mona Lisa Overdrive”
822 Jacket Into Cyberspace
William Gibson Book Club reconvenes to close out the legendary Sprawl trilogy with “Mona Lisa Overdrive,” a book in which there are lots of vibes from a lot of people who are secondary characters in a story being driven by an AI that we never really meet. Robot art projects! Many overlapping jackets, none of them the same size! And a car ride to… the future?! We break it all down.
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June 12, 2026 “All the President’s Men”
821 Historic Parking Garage
Get behind your typewriters! Old Movie Club follows the money to discuss 1976’s “All The President’s Men,” in which the power of dogged reportage and journalistic freedom triumphs over the banality of evil.
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June 5, 2026 2026 Awards Book Club, part 2
820 I Can Read It!
Our survey of award-nominated novels rolls on with “The Buffalo Hunter Hunter,” “When We Were Real,” and “Sour Cherry.” Not gonna lie: we’re struggling with the reading a bit this year. But at least one of these novels threw us a lifeline.
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May 29, 2026 “The Mandalorian and Grogu”
819 All the Babus Frik
We went out to the movies to see “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” the first “Star Wars” film this decade. We had a really good time, thanks in large part to the charisma of many different puppets. (This is “Star Wars,” after all.) We aren’t without our criticisms—Is there ever really any danger? What is Sigourney Weaver doing?—but all in all, this film filled a Star Wars-shaped hole in our hearts.