Decipher Scifi : The Show About How And Why

Aronofsky Shooting for the moon. Making beautiful film. History Olmec, Mayans, Aztec. Murder factories. Nebulae Particularity. Stellar nurseries. Life and Death Differing viewpoints, religious and atheist. The Fountain graphic novel by Daren Aronofsky and Kent Williams: iTunesAmazon Darren Aronofsky remastered and mixed Director Commentary: David Weisbrod Uncertainty Principle the Podcast: Uncertainty Principle Support the show!

Sci-Fi Dystopias 1984, Brazil, Farenheit 451, etc. Why do these count as scifi? User Interfaces as analogy Thanks to Chris Noessel for pointing in the Facebook group the way the “badly designed” user interfaces are really incredibly well-designed, if the point is absurdism. :) Complexity In business, objects, life, gadgets, systems. Ducts! Creepin’. Security Theater Statistics, fear of skin cancer vs shark attack. Viscerality. Euphemistic Language Covering up reality. Making uncomfortable behaviour easier to swallow. Hiding reality. Dreams and Reality Cracking up. Dreams. Endings. War Co. Expandable Card Game: WarCo The Egnineering Guy: YouTube Support the show!

This is real life Well, partially. Lcuky Dragon #5. Hydrogren bomb testing. Real life and movie deaths. Press censorship. Giant movie monsters Godzilla and his ilk. The Lost World. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Oxygen destroyer ¯\(ツ)/¯ Science and regret Oppenheimer. Eyepatch guy. Suicide to save the world. Analogies. Goodbyes Let them fight. Godzilla: Half Century War by James Stokoe: Amazon King of the Monsters: History of Japan Podcast Double Blasted: Radiolab After the Gold Rush: After the Gold Rush Support the show!

Conlang What are constructed languages? Who makes them? The Expanse Designing the language for the TV show. Designing a posteriori languages and a priori languages and difficulties of each. Slang A Clockwork Orange, Andrew Niccol, and other uses of slang to flesh out fictional worlds. Pidgins, Creoles What is a creole, and how did Nick approach designing one for The Expanse The Art of Language Invention by David J Peterson: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

John Hughes And the Brat Pack. Uncle Buck and Breakfast Club. Smagic Science so unscientific, it is magic: smagic. Callbacks to pygmalion and Frankenstein. Sexism/Objectification Boy howdy. Literally using a barbie to create a living sex object. Consent. Creating sex bots. The 1950s comic on which the movie was based. Geekery What are they? what are we? Geeks? Nerds? Both? Growing Up Adolescence sucks. Being a sexually frustrated teenage boy. Fantasies and ethical concerns. Frankenstein w/ Joe Ruppel: Decipher SciFi Made of the Future/Weird Science: Mars Will Send no More Support the show!

Jupiter Baby naming. Looking through a telescope with the kids and co-bff Joe. Astrology.

Brad Bird 50s and 60s techno optimism. The Iron Giant. The Incredibles. World’s Fair Stages of the worlds fair. Our tech and relationship to it. Walt Disney Futurism. Techno optimism. Shaping reality to fit his vision. Tomorrowland Disneyland. EPCOT. Disney’s vision for a designed city. A sense of wonder Childlike optimism. Positivity in the face of pessimism. Three wolf moon. Future Visions Visions of technology and the future  from different periods. omg car is driving how can that be Walt Disney - The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler: iTunesAmazon A 19th Century Vision of the Year 2000: The Public Domain Review Support the show!

Joss Whedon & Firefly Johhhhhhn Cena prank call. Fox’s predilection for cancelling the most-loved shows. Viewing orders. Hard and soft scifi Joss Whedon doesn’t care about the science. Star system design without FTL. A call-in from Adrian Falcone. Sci-Fi western From cyberpunk to westerns. Frontier living. Culture and language Language evolution on generation ships. Creoles. Joss’ poetic Rialogue. Reavers The mythology and the more reasonable backstory. Samuel Mumby calls in to express his appreciation for the former. “Who does the dishes?” Religion Sci-fi treatments of religion by Whedon and others. Firefly: iTunesAmazon Serenity on Science Fiction Film Podcast: LSG Media Bad Character by Ted Chiang: The New Yorker Support the show!

Production Jerome Bixby’s final, lifelong work. A bittorrent success story. The Man From Earth: The Series Why this movie is the best A great mechanism for great conversation: a collection of domain experts exploring hypotheticals. Human Evolution Biological differences. Geography. Proto human language. Memory and Learning Plasticity. Long term memories. Retrospective fill-ins. Meta-memory. Immortal Biology Regeneration. Disease. Scarring and cancer. Nasty, Brutish, and Short Living through humanity’s violent past. Adjusting to the current morality. Old fashioned ways. Danger and Risk Micromorts. Judging risk and how to live life when you’re immortal. "Good job, BRAIN!" by Good Job Brain: GoodJobBrain.com Risk. by VSauce: YouTube : Support the show!

Zoltan! Running for President of the USA as an atheist and a transhumanist. The Singularity Kurzweil. Vernor Vinge. The post-work economy. Luddites and progress. Artificial Intelligence Uploading the human mind. Will people try to convert the first real artificial super intelligence? Transhumanism Improving humanity through technology. Medicine. Life extension and immortality. The Transhumanist Wager. The power of love. Zoltan Istvan: ZoltanIstvan.com Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom: AmazoniTunes The Singulatiry is Near by Ray Kurtzweil: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Gravity and Black Holes More Kip Thorne. Wormholes. Detecting gravitational anomalies. Time Dilation Einstein. Train rides. Relativity. Frames of reference. Frame dragging. Time as an expendable resource. Crazy Planetary Adventures Water planet is the stuff of Christopher’s nightmares.  Frozen clouds! So Many Dimensions Abstraction of extra dimensions into fewer. Tesseracts. Carl Sagan’s genius powers of explanation. Time Travel Paradoxes Predestination paradox? Self-consistent single timelines. Love Multidimensional beings and the power of love. Social utility and bonding, etc. Space Settlement O’Niell cylinders. Another call-in from Liam Ginty of Voices From L5. Flatland & The Fourth Dimension by Carl Sagan: YouTube The Science of Interstellar w/ Kip Thorne: YouTube Support the show!

Memories of Carl Sagan’s Contact Kip Thorne does movie science again. Carl Sagan’s Contact. Mathew McConaughey plays two opposing roles. Corn, Corn, and Corn Monocultures. Blight. We talk about anthropogenic climate change even though it isn’t mentioned in the film. Reduced population. Governments. Explorers and Pioneers Scientific mindset. Humanity’s will to expand. Good science parenting. Robots TARS. 2001. Humor settings and the best robot locomotion. Support the show!

Areas of progress Areas needing a lot of progress to lead to the world of Surrogates: robotics, materials science, network bandwidth and latency, human-machine neural interfaces, legality and ethics. Effects Violent crime nearly nonexistent, productivity, pseudonymity, anonymity, merito cracy. Level playing field for people with disabilties. Soldiering by proxy. Human connection The loss of it. The resistance.  Surprisingly bad solutions. DEKA "Luke" Arm: YouTube Game Over by A Life Well Wasted: 99 Percent Invisible Support the show!

Robbie the Robot Prop design. AI language understanding. Super strength and a matter replicator. Bad reactions to conflicting orders. Like a mechanical calculator dividing by zero! Morbius He’s totally Zod! Philology. Engineering. Dangerous tech designs. Gender Stuff Cutting edge sexiness in the 50s. Innocent virgins. Blaming the victim. To the captain go the spoils. The deleted scenes that explain the animal behaviour: Decoding the Krell Best attempts at judging Krell biology from their technology and architecture. Their “plastic educator.” Deciphering their language. Using alien Wikipedia on microfilm. Vannevar Bush’s Memex. The alien arithmetic problem. Jef Raskin's Alien Arithmetic Problem Jef Raskin Self Destruct A comparison of scuttling procedures in Alien and Forbidden Planet. Speculation about Krell hearing and sight frequencies. The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Is Batman science fiction? Short answer: yeah, sure. Featuring a voice clip from Liam Ginty, space nerd. Batman’s detective work CSI bullet reconstructions. The trappings of science. Batman’s Bondian Gadgetry All kinds. The skyhook. Sonar Phones Prerequisite technologies. Zero day vulnerabilities and phone hacking. Distributed computing to combine the massive data. Google’s Project Tango. Law, Fairness, and Chaos Batman and his enemies in the film. Batman Chooses His Voice by Pete Holmes: YouTube Batman The Animated Series: iTunesAmazon Heart of Ice from Batman TAS: YouTube Support the show!

The Film 90s, Leeloo’s thermal tape, awesome hair. Alien Species Space turtles, space orcs, space squids, space humans. Archeology and ancient mythology. Chamber design. Malevolent Evil The possible nature of the evil space-mass. Zorg’s motivations. Broken window fallacy. 200 Billion Citizens Overpopulation. Governance over interstellar distances. Real-time FTL space comms. Space wizards. Space borders. Building Leeloo 3d printing skeletons. Genetic design and genetic data storage. The Stones Sufficiently advanced technology indistinguishable from magic. Good and bad places to smuggle 20 pounds of stone. “Space opera.” Impossible series of vocal notes. Saved by love, or something. The Divine Language: Affordances and Constraints in the Fifth Element: Vimeo Support the show!

Krypton is Imploding No refuge! Except for all the different refuge options. Harvesting the planet’s core something something oh no it’s collapsing! Zod is the Good Guy On Krypton at least. Sure, he sounded a little bit like Hitler, but look what happened when they didn’t listen to him - no more Krypton! And then Kryptonian Prison Rehab They seem to put some serious resources into their criminal rehab system that barely gets used. Mundane black hole tech. Dildo butt plug space ships. The Codex and the Genesis Chamber Kal first natural birth in centuries. Clearly Kryptonians were multistellar once upon a time. Wonder what happened. Super Awakening Lessons in how not to handle a kid having a panic attack. Humans actually do pretty well adapting to new sensory input. Clark’s compensation and self control. Yellow Sun Superpowers Disagreement over the exact function of Kryptonian power armor and the nature of the yellow sun/superpower relationship. Simulated Consciousness Russel Crowe hol

Shyamalan Christopher loved his direction in this movie. “Twists.”  Appears in all his own films. Crop Circles Crop circle hoaxes. Not a great method of communication. Two Groups of People People who think there is meaning, and people think the universe is deterministic and unconcerned with us as individuals. Benjamin Franklin’s pragmatism re religion. Our own perspective. The Aliens A list of unreasonable presumptions from the movie about alien life. Recon forces. Encryption. Spoilers. The Signs Demon Theory by ZorroMeansFox: Reddit Joaquin Phoenix's Forehead Face: YouTube You Are Not So Smart: The Podcast Support the show!

War of the Worlds - the book, the movie Original book. Orson Welled radio broadcast hysteria not as reported. Radiolab report on repeated adaptations. The new developments at the time of writing that informed the book. Alien Attack Methods, research, planning. Trying to explain the buried  death-bots. But Why Are we food? Do they want our resources? Making the most sense of the options. Are liquified people good for fertilizer? Germ Attack They might have done a little more research. War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells: Project Gutenberg (ebook)Project Gutenberg (audiobook) War of the Worlds (1953 film): iTunesAmazon War of the Worlds Orson Welles original radio broadcast: YouTube Could it happen again? And again?: Radiolab Support the show!

Asimov’s Three Laws Enumerated in spectacular fashion in the film in order to get it out of the way and never speak of it again. Natural Language Processing It’s really hard! Errors in humor and social expectations. Infinite conversational loops. Robot Personification A nurturing environment maybe contributed to Robo Williams’ sentience. Art as awakening. Acting human. Emergence. Robot Slave Class Why don’t we see them? Uncanney Valley Turing tests. Robots, androids, biorobots. Robo Williams’ synthetic organs. What is Life? Actually kind of hard to define. Immortality “Death is an engineering problem.” Positronic Man by Isaac Asmiov: Amazon Humans: iTunesAmazon Robin Williams in Motion by Every Frame a Painting: YouTube Uncertainty Principle Podcast by Daniel James Barker: Soundcloud Support the show!