John encourages Merlin to share some happy memories of his family's monstrous cat, and Merlin cries a little. This leads to a discussion of the journey of new pet acquisition.

Follow-up brings a couple corrections and a quick dive into the technology that was going to change how cities are designed. John thinks it's a miracle that the New York subway was ever built, and Merlin thinks a lot of politics is mostly about telling people they were right.

Decoder Ring examines the history of the Segway, Dean Kamen, DEKA, Ginger, IT, and Dan Kois, book agent.