Welcome to the Sporn Shunks, episode number 399 for Monday, April 27th, 2026. This is a podcast all about

Minecraft, available across all major podcast platforms, including a video version that goes out on YouTube and Spotify.

If you're enjoying the show, consider subscribing wherever you're listening to this. My name is Johnny, but the internet knows me as pixel riffs, and joining me from the Lego Corner is Joel Duggan. Hi, Joel. Hello, we spent the render distance, which is the pre-show, talking about my new Lego set, which is the Lord of the Rings, Saron's Helmet set, which was sent into me for an early birthday gift. So thanks again for that, Cosmic. And we then transitioned in talking about the Lord of the Rings, which I might be rereading this summer. And Johnny is steeped in Lord of the Rings, has come on the Citadel Cafe number of times to talk about rings of power and Lord of the Rings. So that was most of our pre-show. And if that is something that would interest you, check out the render distance. It's the extended version of the program. You can get it at the spawn chunks on Patreon. Members get access to about 20 minutes of pre-show, about 15 or 20 minutes of post-show. Sometimes we talk about Lord of the Rings. Sometimes we talk about Star Wars, Lego. sometimes we talk about Minecraft, but you can get all of it if you sign up on patreon.com

slash post show. Sometimes we talk about Lord of the Rings. Sometimes we talk about Star Wars, Lego. Sometimes we talk about Minecraft. But you can get all of it if you sign up on patreon.com slash the spawn chunks. And you get access to other things as well, like the Discord, as well as the monthly Minecraft hangouts. We recorded our April hangout on Saturday. That got published yesterday. And that's where we hang out with members of our community and talk about what they've been doing in Minecraft. And coming up in the first weeks of May, we're going to have a quarterly hangout. And that's where Johnny and I talk about behind the scenes, YouTube metrics, download numbers, plans for the future for the show. So if that's something that interests you, check out patreon.com slash the spawn chunks. In this episode, we're going to be unpacking the latest snapshot from Mojang and circling back to our discussions about what future mob additions could look like with a discussion about lizards, which is long overdue after our insects and birds discussions that we had before Minecraft Live.

But we'll also give you a heads up once again that episode 400 is our next episode, and for these milestones we like to do something a little bit different.

So this one's going to be an all email episode in which you can write in with a question about basically anything.

It doesn't have to be about Minecraft, it can be basically just a big Q&A with me and Joel.

So we'd love it if people wrote in. You can put the episode number 400 in the subject line of the email to let us know that's what it is for. Keep emails shortened to the point so we can include as many of them as possible. But consider it kind of like a Q&A or AMA kind of style episode. And we'll also be releasing the full episode next week for everybody. That includes the render distance all recorded on video and audio.

So that should be going out on everybody's feeds exactly the same.

So you can see behind the scenes a little bit about what our patrons get as supporters of the show.

So what have you been up to in Minecraft this week?

Well, this week I finally have something to show you from the surface for once, because I have still been working on the beacon mine.

It is down to the last two layers, and I hope everyone's ready for me to talk about something else.

And by something else, I mean building the same redstone contraption for at least a month.

But on the surface, back over by my spawn area, as I mentioned last week, I finally have screenshots of the somewhat more finished little animal pens and pastures that I was working on as part of a bit of a dive into tiny takeover.

I've tried to include screenshots that had the baby mobs in where I could. Some of them have had the golden dandelion fed to them, so they'll be staying that way permanently.

Others, not so much, and I was just breeding a couple to get some extra little piggies and chicks in the shot.

But I'm planning on including rabbits, goats, and probably the sniffers that I have as well in that same area,

plus warm and cold variants of the mobs that have them, like the chickens,

the cows and the pigs. I keep thinking sheep have them, but sheep is just the different colours are more likely in different areas. So I've made sure to include at least the natural

colours of sheep. Since I already have a wool farm that's got all 16 colours covered, I figured those

could at least look like the ones that you find natively in the wild. But yeah, the sheep pen has more of like a little lean-to shelter kind of thing

...