Shedding the Heading

What do a card game, Galileo, a decades-old Star Wars pronunciation debate, and a jigsaw puzzle box have in common? This episode is about the difference between believing something because it's true and believing something because you're told to.

Starting from a card game called 3 to 13 — where every turn comes down to one question: does this card belong in my hand, or do I need to shed it? — this episode follows that question out into institutions, physics, and belief itself. Along the way: Galileo, a corporate audit method, parole boards, Einstein's theory of relativity, the physics running your phone's GPS right now, and a South Park episode that's about a lot more than it looks like.

It's not really about any one of those things. It's about what happens to your heading — literally, physically, where you actually end up — when you stop carrying the pieces that were never really yours.