Decipher Scifi : The Show About How And Why

Scifi and Fantasy Our different aptitudes for processing fantasy. Fantasy tropes, internal consistency, Patrick Rothfuss. Wizard and muggle technologies Telegraphs, internets, owls and agentive magical paper airplanes. Other things too! The power of names “True name” magic in Harry Potter. IRL examples. Ancient Egypt, Medieval Europe, Jewish mysticism, Aronofsky’s Pi. Rothfuss again. Classism and wizard racism Wizard Hitler! Wizard warfare Magic bullet machine gun enchanted buckler wizards. Enchanted riot shields with a wand-hole in them. Other innovations. Characters The fascististic headmistress, Ballatrix, Luna, and other characters we wanted to note. Harry Potter: iTunesAmazon Imaginary Worlds Podcast: Apple PodcastsRSS Support the show!

Chris' favorite Decipher SciFi selfie ❤️ Production Issues before, issues during, issues in the final cut. So many issues! How the movie lost much of the depth of the book. Scifi vs Fantasy Sciencey veneer over a big pile of fantasy. Maybe steampunk? Dark Matter Recognizing that dark matter makes no sense as an explanation for dust. Considering the public conception of dark matter way back when the book was written. Discovery and modern evidence. Bullet cluster. Baryonic matter. Dark energy or the cosmological constant. The Mind-Body Problem Familiars and daemons and souls. Dualism. Consciousness uploading. Metaknowledge. Polar Bears Polar bear evolution. Shrinking habitat. Hollow hairs and skin color and other adaptations. Blubber and keeping cool. Parallel Universes Svalbard! Aurora. The many-worlds interpretation. His Dark Materials By Philip Pullman: iTunesAmazon Does Dark Matter Break Physics? by PBS Spacetime: YouTube Support the s

Alien Seed Colony Human aliens in Norway c 709 A.D. The “Prometheus Problem.” Viking Language Old norse and 12th century Icelandic. The Icelandic sagas. Ocular Data Input Brain implants, language learning, and nosebleeds. Whaling Whales are big! Warrior Culture Berserkers and their magic mushrooms. Specific training methodologies between vikings, space marines, and dragon-fighting. The Monster The movie turns into Predator. Elephant-lion-crocodiles. Apex predator population scales. Bioluminescence Frequency of bioluminescence. Adaptation. Wavelengths. Is bioluminescence expensive? Viking Age Podcast: Apple PodcastsRSS Beowulf the movie: iTunesAmazon Beowulf translated by Seamus Heeney: Amazon Support the show!

Nick Farmer He’s a linguist! And a conlanger, technically. His website: Nick Farmer Linguist His Twitter: @nfarmerlinguist Sapir-Whorf AKA linguistic relativity, and why it is a very very wrong thing. A warm and fuzzy idea that turns out, after facing science, not to reflect reality well. Nick really really wants to set the record straight on this matter. Spoken Alien Language Considering the possibilities. Different modalities. Language need not be sound-based! ASL. Frequencies of sound. Written Language Heptapod B! Bending over backwards to figure out a way for alien languages to break the linearity of time. Alien Writing System The complexity of deciphering alien writing systems. Extradimensionality. Stephen Wolfram wrote the software to create the logograms. Human language analogies. Mapping ideas and words and concepts is REALLY complicated. Everything by Ted Chiang: Amazon Support the show!

Futurists Eliot shares how Kevin Kelly, Stuart Brand, et al advised the filmmakers on how the future ought to look. The movie’s prescience makes a lot more sense now. Privacy Intrusion Intrusion creep. Giving up your privacy knowingly. Testing users. Thought Crimes Is it a thought crime? Or just determinism? Big Data/Precogs Artificial intelligence. Machine learning. Policing, advertising. Oakland and other cities. Utopia/Dystopia The rather rosy picture painted by Minority Report and its realism. How it seems more reasonable now than it may have at the time. Gestural Interface Feedback cycle between our fiction and real life. Dismantling The System Could such a system be dismantled! It’s hard to just part with a murder rate of zero. Eliminating murder vs civil liberties. Cumulus by Eliot Peper: Amazon Make it So by Chris Noessel: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Alien Ship Technology Ship materials construction. Anti-gravity technologies. Tesseracts. Shadows looking into other dimensions. Alien Math and Physics Jef Raskin's alien math Superdimensionality. Imagining alien understanding of maths and physics. Different perspectives forcing different approaches. The physics of alien arrivals. Linguistic Relativity The strong version of the  Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is not backed by good evidence. Superdimensional alien languages. Gaining new perspective into the reality of the universe. Preparation Military secret-keeping. General Whitaker’s Morpheus operandi: “I cannot tell you what the matrix is. I have to show you.” Everything by Ted Chiang: Amazon Ted Chiang on Decipher SciFi: Decipher SciFi Darmok: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Lament Our love for Star Trek and how this does or does not fit. Drone Swarm Drone swarm tactics. Realizing they’re robots. Explosive Decompression It is all manners of unpleasant. Universal Translator Christopher’s revelation. IRL real-time translation software. Skype Translator. Security Systems And bad design. Teleporters Breaking phsyics. Weaponization. The Trouble with Teleporters by CGP Grey: YouTube Deep Space Nine: iTunesAmazon The United Federation of 'Hold my beer, I got this': Imgur Support the show!

what Vivisection Definitions. Victorian science and protest movements. John Hunter and the John Byrne Irish Giant. Behaviourist views of animal feelings. Humans as an animal Coming to terms with our place in nature in Wells’ time. Natural selection vs selection by Moreau. Individual plasticity and heredity More vivisection. Human body modification and evolution. Religious analogy The “father” and the “laws.” Should we do x? Chris plays the amoral scientist monster every time we ask this question. Carnivore vs herbivore Moral of the story: Moreau really should have bred a race of herbivores. Would have side-stepped a lot of issues. Transhumanism Strategies in evolving humanity and combining with our replacement life form. Frankenstein: science fiction horror, reanimation, and victorian context w/ Joe Ruppel: Decipher SciFi The Limits of Individual Plasticity by H.G. Wells: Google Books Support the show!

Movie origins Who Goes There? short story. Previous adaptations: The Thing From Another World (1951) · Horror Express (1972) · The Thing (2011) Antarctic Exploration British and Norwegian missions. Cultures and approaches. Antarctic Research Conditions. Connectivity. Boredom. Whiskey, cigars, and shoe leather. Antarctic Doctoring You need a certain kinda Dr MacGyver badass for this job. Spinal self-diagnosis, etc. Wilford Brimley diabeetus. John Carpenter cinematography and soundtracks and storytelling Cae and Ryan understand these things, and explain them to us. We mostly get it. The Thing So many questions. Where did it come from? How does it work? The nature of the creature. Is it intelligent? The nature of consciousness If you were The Thing, could you know you were The Thing? Would The Thing know it was The Thing? Self interest in all cases. Group interests in all cases. Infection If I can’t win, neither can you. The doctor was the only one acting rightly. Best plan: destroy

Editions Theatrical vs “The Version You’ve Never Seen.” Demons Devils, demons, pazuzu, deception. How do people get possessed? Different theories. Supernaturalism Supernatural detective work. Priest losing his faith. “Real” Exorcism The Catholics. The Rite of Exorcism. Bureaucracy. Serious vs loosey-goosey exorcisms. Simple vs Easy Explanations Occam’s razor. Science. Latin Tradition. Latin as the language of ancient evil. Ecclesiastical latin. Order of Operations Medicine -> fringe medicine -> call a priest! Horror The ways this movie is timelessly excellent and scary. Parenting. Demon Battle Plan Demons might not be the best at planning, OR we might be inconsequential nothings to them, OR creating a rift between god and his people is their job. The Exorcist - Killapalooza: Double Feature Podcast You Are Two by CGP Grey: YouTube Support the show!

Lab Safety Security in researching highly contagious zombie viruses. Animal liberation. Biological Infection Viruses, parasites, R0, monkeys. Infection rates. Bloodborne illness. Zombies Zombie taxonomy. Do these count as zombies? A disgreement. Fainting goats. Preparedness CDC recommendations. Weapon choice. Get on a boat. Hospital Escape Cillian Murphy’s wiener. Playing God. Shaun of the Dead: iTunesAmazon Dead Island: Steam Brookhaven Experiment for HTC Vive: Support the show!

Keanu We love Keanu. But that accent! Oy vey. And standing across from Gary Oldman, no less. Vlad Vlad history lesson. Spikes in the butt. Motivations. Elizabethan Sexuality Promiscuity, puritanism. Syphilis. Bloooood. Vampire Rules How to vampire. Eating/drinking Blood Maasi blood drinking. Blood preparations in various world cuisines. Blood fetishes? Science vs Supernaturalism In the period and place. Bram Stoker's Dracula by Bram Stoker: Project GutenbergiTunesAmazonLibrivox Dracula (1931): iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Steven Seagal Adam West, pre-Batman. An impressive entrance and an early, unfortunate exit. Scientific Accuracy Surprisingly reasonable space tech and portrayal of mars! For the time. The Martian Commonalities. Scientific accuracy with the knowledge of the time. Mars Bowser fireballs. Atmosphere. History of our Knowledge of Mars Galileo, albido mapping, canali, Percivall Lowell, modern missions. Planetary Exploration How to explore a new planet Open mask Breathe deeply Cross your fingers Martian Resources and Features Water, underwater sausage plants, red vines, air, atmosphere. Ice caps, aurora, vulcanism. Columbus on Mars Exploration and enslaving people. Friday, Friday. Gotta get down on Friday. Culture and intelligence. The Martian: iTunesAmazon The Martian on Decipher SciFi: Decipher SciFi Support the show!

Just a normal day in the studio Relativity time travel Jerky Charlton Heston. 99.999995% the speed of light. Time dilation. The Mission Settle? Explore? Three men and one women on a colonization mission. Charlton Heston is a bad person. Moon on the brain Exploding moons, broken moons, moon impacts. Callbacks: Cowboy Bebop, Seveneves, Deep Impact Language Biology of speech. Cognitive speech development. Language evolution. Animal Intelligence Octopuses, corvids, elephants, various apes. Mostly chimps. Tool use, language. Moving the goalposts. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari: iTunesAmazon Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? by Frans de Waal: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Meta Cowboy Bebop the series, Yoko Kanno, style points. Space Western Shades of Firefly. Gate Disaster Shades of Seveneves and Deep Impact. Meteor impacts are becoming a recurring theme! Settling Mars Biodomes, marscrete, martian soil, regolith, constructive impacts. Terraforming. Biodomes. Weather Control China! Weather control before and after the Beijing Olympics. Cold and warm cloud seeding. Chemicals. Super-frozen, uncrystallized. water. Cowboy Bebop the Series: Funimation Voices from L5: Patreon Support the show!

Citizen Astronomy People. Computers. Computer vision. KIC 8462852. E.L.E. Extinction level events. Dinosaur impact. Impactor scales. Impactor Types Meteors, meteorites, meteors, comets, asteroids. Avoiding Impacts Gentle (nuclear bombs), and less gentle (gravity tug) methods of redirecting impactors. Earth Impacts Tunguska, dinosaur impact. The difference between a small number of large impacts and a large number of small ones. Humanity’s Fate Floods, atmospheric disruption, a world aflame from the heat of a million impactors. The Formation of the Moon: YouTube Asteroids in Resonance with Jupiter: YouTube Death from the Skies by Phil Plait: iTunesAmazon Solar System Collision Calculator: Astronomy Workshop Support the show!

Origins Short story “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates. Cold War paranoia. 50s. Aliens Humanoid and otherwise. Sex with aliens? Alien life from Mars, Venus, or maybe even moons of Jupiter. Period Things Everybody smokes. Letting your kid go around town with strange men. Independent women of the 50s. More smoking. Language Emray Klaatu naruat macro proval brarato lukto denso implikit yavo tarri axell plakatio baringa degas. Gort Gort’s real concerns. Who is the real master? Open source space police operating systems. Atomic Power The atomic energy scene in the 50s. Great power and great responsibility. Violence Whoever carries the biggest stick seems to be right. Lotus Dimension: Lotus Dimension Support the show!

Time Travel Choices Why 2063? World War 3. Population. Booming warp drive economy. Borg Fighting Defensive strategies. Best weapons for fighting the borg: bats or sneakers? Borg Origins “Borgigins.” Transhumanism. Definitions of evolution. Borg Behaviour/Design Like ants! And maybe bees a little. But mostly ants! Comm techs. Bee-dance grammar. Warp Drive Alcubbiere drives, distorting space-time. Antimatter is expensive! Star Trek: Amazon Support the show!

The movie’s history Crowdfunding.  Timur Bekmambetov.  Biting Elbows music videos. First-Person film and video games Visual language of first person shooters. Our affection for the genre and this film by extension. Filming and FX “Adventure Mask” iterative design. Camera mounting and how bets to capture first person action. VFX difficulties with Go Pros. Motion Sickness Surprising study results with old and young players. Motion sickness vs simulation sickness. Sharlto A Sharlto appreciation party. Remote surrogate body control. Horse horse, lol. How Hardcore Henry's POV shots were made by Ian Failes: FXGuide The Stampede by Biting Elbows: YouTube Bad Motherfucker by Biting Elbows: YouTube Support the show!

Read the book Our attempt to convince folks to read the book. Do it! The moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason. It was waxing, only one day short of full. The time was 05:03:12 UTC. Later it would be designated A+0.0.0, or simply Zero. The opening paragraph of Seveneves Neal Stephenson Big old nerd. Chris expresses appreciation for his deep-dives. Meteor Strikes Tunguska. Chelyabinsk. Measuring in five dollar footlongs and blue whales. Who knows how many fathoms? Shielding! Humans and computers are both susceptible to radiation. Choosing Our Evolution Deaf parents choosing to have deaf babies. Culture. Technology in Space Difficulty in producing microchips. Dan’s experience in chemicals and computing. Lost knowledge. Gliding Thermals and ridge lifts and whatnot. Terrifying! The Day The Moon Blew Up by Bill Gates: GatesNotes Support the show!