Today I'm joined by two social scientists to address the question: is science a game? Michael Penkler, Stefan Sulzenbacher, and Stephan Voss recently published an article on this topic: Playing science: representing and doing research in board games. After a brief discussion of the way that philosophers have considered science a game, the article looks at 3 board games that simulate science.

Michael and Stefan join me to discuss their article, and what looking at science as a game can teach us about how science works.

Here's a link to the article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09505431.2026.2630948

Molly Worthen joins me to discuss her recent NYTimes article "You Can't Game Your Way to a Real Education," which argues that the gamification of classroom learning stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how students learn. We discuss the broader adoption of tech in classrooms, the way that standardized testing can be thought of as a game, the danger of frictionless edutainment games, and the place for games in real learning.

You can read the article here (behind a paywall): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/19/opinion/schools-edtech-laptops-games-learning.html

Molly's website is here: https://mollyworthen.com/

Lex Play, a video game YouTube streamer, joins me to discuss her specialty: cozy games. We quickly figure out that cozy games are less about winning and more about creating, a trend that Lex identifies as having started with MineCraft. Lex also tells us how being a video game streamer creates real communities, both online and off-line.

You can find Lex on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/c/LexPlayy