Decipher Scifi : The Show About How And Why

Cronenberg Creepy body horror. Fingers in holes. This is kinda hot. The video game industry Gaming in film. Brainscan. The video game bubble. E.T. The Video Game landfill debacle. AAA Game budgets before people took the industry seriously. AAA Auteur creators of the past. Auteur creators in indie games now. Meat guns Wooden cannons! Wow! Harvesting ammunition from people’s mouths. Bio-based squirt guns as a reasonable alternative. Blood-squirting lizards. Alternative computing Biological computing: mechanical, electrical, and chemical. Quantum supremacy. Nipple interfaces and umbilicals. Neural interfaces Neural interface placements. Spinal connections and how to interact with the sensory loop. Bodily orifice security defenses. Sphincters vs meatuses. Reality But how do we tell what is real anyway!? The power of storytelling, even when you know it’s not real. Railroading. Milgram experiment the game. War Stories by Ars Technica: YouTube GDC Classic Game Post

Robot police Keeping the peace when independent operations can make their own giant robots. Staying somewhat prepared for returning existential threats. Jaeger graveyard Stowing expensive purpose-built machinery. Aircraft graveyards. The economics of storing and securing out-of-production technology for later use. Robotics Avoiding trouble with the square-cube law by building smaller robots. Boston Dynamics and the inevitable impression of the coming robot apocalypse. Parkour Atlas. Robot kumite. Drones Securing mobile war machines. EMPs. Resistance to signal-jamming. Broad attack surfaces. Brain in a jar IRL progress towards a brain in a jar: human brain organoids implanted on a mouse brain. Sensory apparatus and feeling pain. Getting (ethically) hairy. Rare earth elements Actually: not so rare! But a pain in the ass to extract. The Japanese rare earth ocean-bottom treasure trove and how it will be difficult to access. Mining rare earth elements from spaaaaaaaace and how we probably nee

Criticism Sloppy orbital mechanics and the value of science-adjacent entertainment. Ed Harris Forever the voice of Mission Control. Space is dangerous Almost as scary as the ocean. EVA jet chairs NASA’s MMU. The new tiny one: SAFER! Giant rectal rectangle jet chairs? Where and how things orbit Earth-orbital distances. Where different kinds of man-made satellites operation and how they are not likely to run into each other roughly ever. The utility of geostationary orbits. Earth orbits. Orbital impacts Relative velocities. Could you dodge a sniper bullet? IRL ISS escape procedures. Soyuz escape plans. Deadspin Glowing blood and possible alien infections. Human sensitivity to positive and negative g-forces. Trying to push more blood to your head for mental superpowers. Orbital transfer And impromptu deorbiting. How to crash a probe into mars (by accident). Pressurization Chinese space stations, then and now. Station entrance and exit procedures. Finally the Star Trek balloon a

Skyscrapers History. The industrialization at scale of steel. The state of things. Future heights. Arcologies. Vertical cities Hong Kong’s real estate problem. Urban verticality and resource efficiency. Living in coffin pods and sharing utilities. Holodeck IRL holodeck technology. Projecting images for multiple . Your own personal Dyson display cloud. Frickin lasers directly in your eyes. CastAR. Skyscraper materials technology Sand as a rubbish base for huge buildings. Building deep foundations in the desert. Wooden skyscrapers!? Sand in concrete and sand shortages. Varieties of sand. Engineered sand. Fire Fire suppression! Overheated air and air pressure for aircraft. Elevators Elevator cable lengths and limits. Maglev elevators. High-speed elevators. PORK CHOP SANDWICHES Support the show!

Doom Doom! Nostalgia. The Martian moons Crappy moons that can barely form a potato. Phobos and Deimos. Delineating between moons, planets, and all the other stuff. The likely origin of the Martian moons. Space marines Corporate space settlement and operations. Space Force. Josh reviews space marines; again. Martian weaponry. Settling mars Where to build? The cost of scratch settlement construction. Caves and lava tubes. Teleporting resources changes the game. Ancient aliens The Prometheus Problem, again. Doom humans-on-mars hypotheses: aliens developed humans on Mars vs humans originated on Mars. Species resurrection. Gene therapy. Chromosomal addition and subtraction. Martian miscellany Nano walls! Water on Mars! Telefragging! Science Fiction Film Podcast: LSG Media The X-Files Podcast: LSG Media Masters of Doom by David Kushner: iTunesAmazon Support the show!

Image enhancement Naive vs machine-intelligent image enhancement. “Photorealistic hallucination” and honest technical names. Reconsidering the absurdity of fictional image enhancement in the age of clever neural nets. Creative, artistic “enhancement” vs rigor. Paralyzation workarounds Well, breaking your spinal chord sure seems to suck. Spinal breaks and the autonomic nervous system. Bodily control via brain-machine interface. Transhumanism Extension of human functionality by implanted technology! Increasing neural communication speed, or shortening signal distance. Gun arms. Gun arms! Vocal device command by subvocalization. The AI “box test” Self-serving artificial intelligence. Yudkowsky’s AI  box test. Callback to Ex Machina. Additional stipulations. The true power of a goon with a wrench. How easy are humans to fool? Very. Yudkowsky's AI box test: Yudkowski.net Decipher RPG Pilot episode 1: Decipher SciFi Decipher RPG Pilot episode 2: Decipher Sc

Our heroes make a real mess of an airship or two, and FINALLY Bodyguard Chris manages to turn the tables and make something of his repeated failures. Emperor Colbert tries not to die before the end. (This podcast is the finale of our pilot series for Decipher RPG where we play Mirror by Sandy Pug Games with Liam Ginty. Previously: Part 1 & Part 2) Support the show!

Afrofuturism Wishing there were more of this in popular media. Invisible cities A review of invisibility technology: spatial, temporal, and spectral light cloaking. Vibranium to the rescue. Vibranium Space impactors. Resource Armor Body armor, stationary armor. Avoiding concussive force. Reactive armor in tanks: shaped explosives that explode at the other thing that’s gonna explode! Molecular springs of carbon for storage of mechanical energy from kinetic. How not to turn into Black Panther jelly when the suit releases its energy (be superhuman). Absolute monarchies Bas Rutten for king. Right hoooook. Scars and sweat Killmonger’s scarification and scar damage to the dermis. Sweat patterns around scars. Telepiloting Remote vehicle control. Light-speed communications delays. AI-assisted remote human driving. War Rhinos Domestication vs trainability. Extinct war elephants and why we can’t have war rhinos. Dürer’s rhinoceros, drawn from notes on the first rhino seen in Europe since R

Emperor Colbert dresses down and bodyguard Chris rediscovers the joy of the bidet and the German shelf toilet. Then: daring aerial maneuvers! (This podcast is the second part of our pilot series for Decipher RPG where we play Mirror by Sandy Pug Games with Liam Ginty. Previously: Part 1) Support the show!

This podcast is the first of three episodes of our pilot series for Decipher RPG where we play Mirror by Sandy Pug Games with Liam Ginty. Here is part 2! After some particular fun with character creation, Emperor Colbert’s coronation is interrupted by a sudden attack. With RPG-Colbert still entranced in his ceremonial mask, his bodyguard Chris rushes him to safety, but… airships! Support the show!

Doggo Man’s best friend! And one of (many of?) our best technologies. The level to which we can handicap animals for aesthetics if we put our mind to it. Domesticated foxes. Domestication Domestication. Plants and animals. Bending chosen qualities to better human use. Watermelon as of The Renaissance. Yay selective breeding! We win! Warbot design Implicit and explicit communication channels. Dog human body language-reading. Data connections and cloudy signal processing. Adaptation of dog body-design to robots. The small design effort required to get people to treat a robot animal like an animal. Flamethrowers The difference between industrial and military flamethrowers. An unpleasant, sticky material: napalm and napalm-like products! Survey! We have one of those. Pls help by hitting the link we gave in the episode! Support the show!

Classic arcade gaming Memories of the arcade and the Sega Game Gear. Introduction of Larry the Rat in the Atari Lynx port. How to pick from current social fears for your lazy game plot. Zero-G research Genetics research in spaaaaaace. CRISPR. Bremen Drop Tower. Gorilla sign language Koko the gorilla. Gorilla sign language. Credulity and confirmation bias. Impressive gorilla lexicons. Adventures in signing portmanteus. Yogurt aka “milkfruitcandy food.” Animal fights Comparing the gorilla to the grizzly bear. Relative animal size. Grizzly bears as killing machine. Gorilla conflict-avoidance techniques. Scaling animals The square-cube law! Relative scaling and the race between volume and surface area (volume always wins!). The creation of a bio antenna. The relatively low energy of radio waves. Mutations, mutations, mutations Gorilla turns into giant gorilla. Lizard turns into mega lizard. Wolf, though, turns into a wolf… with patagia and throwable quills! Possibly resembling the urticating

Spoiler alerts Special conditions requiring primary and secondary warnings. Robots How to tell if you are a robot? New Study Finds Best Way To Determine If You Are Android Still Cutting Open Forearm To Reveal Circuitry Within. Self-delusion and mass self-delusion. Earthvacuation Earth is really well-tuned for our needs (or is it the other way around?), and humans should try to maintain this as a base of operations if at all possible. Surviving outside of Earth Key resources on Mars and elsewhere in the solar system (outside of Earth). Iron for bullets. Rocket fuel. Stealth in space There is no stealth in space. Trying to hide from Earth (on Mars). Difficulties in hiding propulsion, light-blocking, and infrared emission. Hiding “in” the sun. Attacking Earth Shock and awe vs the impossibility of stealth. Why a nuclear EMP attack might not be a great idea. Throw a rock at it. Evolving consciousness Evolved consciousness in Earth life. The possibility of consciousness emerging in “artifi

Love Love! For James Cameron and Aliens. And the great utilitarian design of the spaceship interiors. Great world-building. Hypersleep Cryosleep? Ice sublimation and mummified Sigourney Weaver. Hibernation. How to shove pine cones up your butt, chug some Nyquil, and turn into a bear. Cryogenic specimen preservations: sperm! DIY fecal plugs for hibernation. Private space industry The rise of private space industry. Going dystopian. Planetary operations Planet? Moon? The delineation between planets and moons and looking forward to the future when we get confused again. Demoting Pluto to planetoid. Terraforming Mars. Sad news on Martian CO2 supplies for atmosphere creation. Crater settlements and whether or not you need a roof. Atmospheric density limits for human comfort and thriving. Xenomorphs But are they really called Xenomorphs? The throwaway line in Aliens that spawned decades of confusion. Send the robots Always send the robots. Unless you are an evil corporation with shady goals. Mil

Space settlement The economics of leaving Earth. Settling the inner and outer solar system. The Expanse. Space cattle and other space resources (water, mineral). Garbage - in spaaace! Garbage in space aka space junk. Cleaning up space junk. Giant nets as a major cleanup strategy. Garbage - on Eaaaarth! Modern waste management. What to do with municipal solid waste. Leachate. The difference between dumps and landfills and the interesting energy-reclamation technology involved in cutting edge WTE facilities. Plastic Massive plastic appreciation. How plastics ushered in the modern world. A lament for wasteful use of “disposable” plastic products. Microplastics in the water. Biodegradable plastics. The discovery of plastic-eating bacteria. Speeding up nature to digest plastic now. The coming plague of plastic-eating bacteria. “De-evolution” This isn’t a thing! There’s no end point that is being retreated from - life just adapts to pressures, ongoing. Handling failure Revisiting our past fail

Fandom Identity according to interests. Fiction as personal and social mirror. Cultures and subcultures and super-niches. The “Stacks” Ad-hoc city large-scale construction. Kowloon Walled City. Virtual Reality immersion technology VR treadmills vs slippy-feet (Virtuix Omni). Looking silly. Scaling and translation from real-world input to virtual worlds. Manual and body haptics. Simulating moistness. Nard-stimulation for good and ill. VR spatial awareness Directional trickery in virtual reality. Tricking people into experiencing smaller real-world spaces as much larger in virtual reality. Saccade-driven Redirected Walking for VR. Resolution of virtual worlds Pixel densities and optical foci. Continuity of experience and detection of the difference between virtual and simulated worlds. Finding the clever “hacks” that will enable us to more deeply immerse ourselves in VR experiences. Sharding Virtual world scale and sharding vs mon-worlds.Virtu Value systems Real virtual economies and r

The Man From Earth Our love for the original. Considering the sequel. People talking in a room. Nostalgia The coming-on of the bronze age. Grocking the rate of progress w/ Dominick Perry. “Free time” in hunter-gatherer societies. Nostalgia as a way to bridge from what was old and comfortable to what is new and scary. Cro-magnon Anatomically modern humans vs socially modern humans. The evolutionary advantage of controlled fire and beginning to cook food. Getting away from all-day mastication and looooooooong intestines in favor of the big brain on Brad. Primitive Technology Getting boy without modern technology. The earliest evidence for humans cooking with fire. Differentiating human-controlled fire from millennia ago from other sources (like iguanas, or wildfires). Growing old Life expectancies over time. Appreciation for antibiotics. Life expectancy vs life_span_. Evolving into a centauranarian. Jesus Less-than-generous portrayals of religious characters. Third-act surprises. Jesus vs

Testosterone Preposterous amounts of testosterone. Preposterone. Ahhnold and Carl Weathers. The muscles from Brussels in spaaaaace. Invisibility Picking a chunk of the electromagnetic spectrum to be invisible within. Spatial light manipulation Temporal light manipulation Spectral light manipulation Predator vision Seeing in infrared! Interactions between optical camouflage and optical receivers. Why doesn’t all the life on Earth have heat vision? Heat-tracking evolution. Pit viper heat sensors. Human heat-tracking. Biology absorbing infrared. Seeing in greyscale. Wet clay camouflage and effectiveness over time. Mythbusting. Infrared-blocking materials. Predator physiology Aliens vs Predator for top monster. Ears…? Bleeding. The rainbow of different blood colors available on Earth. Green blood. Luminescent blood. Figuring out why only arthropods seems to have mandibles, and lamenting the lack of them in macro predators. Shared Universe Appreciating that Blade Runner is pretty much of

A collection of responses to feedback and addenda from supporter Jeremy. Basically, a review of some things we missed in a few episodes and an expansion on others. :-) Volcano Fault types review. Flood basalts as hot spot lava spam. The Deccan Traps. Vulcanism as a possible explanation for dinsoaur extinction (Wargames). The Last Jedi Progress in millitary tactics. The triumph of guerrilla tactics. Politeness in chess. Mt St Helens sound waves. High-energy events. Black Mirror Season 4 Part 1 - Arkangel Implantable devices. API development. Philip K Dick’s Electric Dreams Lojban. Constructed languages. Esperanto. Transformers the Last Knight Unfavorable reviews. Myth vs legend vs fable as given to us by an actual folklorist. Colonialism and the lens of cultural study. Swole Jesus. Zeus’s promiscuity. Anti-intellectualism. Stargate “Gopher nukes.” Tactical nuclear yields. Nuclear testing and Godzilla. Men in Black Alcohol! Low-alcohol beverages in history instead of water. A History

Surviving without sound Deafness. How loud is a fart? Cochlear implants. Alien defense engineering. Cochlear implants How cochlear implants differ from hearing aids. How a cochlear implant works. The difficulties of hearing loss. Grain Entrapment Ughhhhhhhhh. Compression and suffocation. Echolocation The strangeness of terrestrial echolocation. Frequency adaptations for different types of prey. Signal rate at different distances. The creatures Planetary orbit situations with extended periods of surface darkness. Extremophile armor development. Echolocation evolution. Space cat behaviour. Dinner Time ambulation. Killing aliens Feedback loops. Amplitude vs frequency and damaging the hearing apparatus. BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Echolocation: BBC Shooting Down a Lost Drone and why Dogs Tilt their Heads - Smarter Every Day: YouTube Support the show!