decipher SciFi : the show about how and why

Get the game: Steam | Amazon Doom (video game) (2016) What: Go to hell and kick some ass. Something something portals and guns or whatever. Published by: Bethesda Created by: id Software Featuring Daniel James Barker of Uncertainty Principle the Podcast Recommended and Related Media Doom (The original game) Big nostalgia boner. And it’s still really fun. And cheap to buy and play legit! Get it GoG | Steam | Android | iTunes Doom 2016 Soundtrack It’s pretty rockin’ and they published it with a really nice visualization: Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner A trip down memory lane, or a history lesson. The story of id software and their huge role in the business and culture of the game industry. Read it with your ears iTunes | Amazon Read it with your eyes iTunes | Amazon Uncertainty Principle the Podcast by Daniel James Barker Ours guest has a really good show of his own. Science! Subscribe UP Podcast Show Notes Doom Doom was a really awesome important thing in 1993. History lessons because Dan is too young to understand but we are old. Nostalgia, for better or for worse. Modularity and the development of game modding. How to play a modern game without playing it. The true test of technology The true test of any technology: can it run Doom? Doom running on a Macbook Pro Touch Bar. Volumetric Projections “3D holograms.” As a narrative/historical record playback device. As seen in: Prometheus. Difficulties versus augmented reality. Health Measuring “life” as a life meter. Micromorts and actuarial considerations. Safety gear in health packs. Hell Universe Tapping into unlimited energy; who could resist? Vega the supercomputer Turing tests. Regrets. “Absolute zero” cooling systems and marketing speak. Backups analagous to DNA cloning. Samuel Hayden Body transplants vs brain transplants. Where does the self reside? Cyborg geniuses. Life goals. Goodbyes RIP AND TEAR Feedback? Please Contact Us contact@decipherscifi.com Amazon and iTunes links include our affiliate codes.

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon The Girl With All the Gifts What: Fungus zombies! Directed by: Colm McCarthy Starring: Gemma Arterton, Glenn Close, Dominique Tipper, Sennia Nanua Recommended and Related Media The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey Description Read it with your eyes iTunes | Amazon Read it with your ears iTunes | Amazon Why Do We Have Two Nostrils? by VSauce [youtbe=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiAx2kqmUpQ&t=87s] The Last of Us Everybody thought this game was really good. It resembles this movie in a few ways (fungus zombies!). Get the thing Amazon Zombie Parasites from Nat Geo Live Sense of smell Hunting by smell. Covering scents. Smelling slow and fast. The power of Axe Body spray. The power of chemical warfare. How “smells” work. IRL Ophiocordyceps unilateralis! The real fungus on which the zombie fungus is based. The rundown of its lifecycle. Biting the leaf. Chemical instructions controlling behaviour. Cordyceps moving to humans The difference in arthtropod and human circulatory and nervous systems. How to best spread fungal infections between humans. The end of homo sapiens Parasites forcing their hosts to act in their interests. Mushroom towers. The rise of homo boletus. Coming around on anthropocentrism. Goodbyes Do you want a cat? Feedback? Please Contact Us contact@decipherscifi.com Amazon and iTunes links include our affiliate codes. If you wouldn’t mind helping us out a tiny bit, go ahead and use them to buy/stream something. Thanks!

Stream the miniseries: iTunes | YouTube Childhood’s End (SyFy miniseries) What: Humanity is forced into utopia and it’s pretty sweet actually for a minute Directed by: Nick Hurran Starring: Mike Vogel, Julian McMahon, Charles Dance, Yael Stone, Daisy Betts Recommended and Related Media Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke The book on which the miniseries was based. Featuring basically the same story but with now-funny extrapolations of how technology would progress. Read it with your ears iTunes | Audible Read the paper book with your eyes like some backwards cave-person Amazon   Show Notes Arrival/First Contact Aircraft shielding. Impressing upon humanity the futility of resistance. Selecting Diplomats Alien diplomatic moneyball. They Know Us Flawless colloquial earth languages. Cultural context. How to manipulate apes. Benevolent alien dictatorship. Curbing Scientific Inquiry Approaching utopia removing incentives for innovation. Alien limits on research. “The stars were not meant for man.” The Great Filter Maybe these aliens in the show are the great filter. Filling in some slots of the Drake Equation. Maybe we’re just terrible for the universe and they know it. :/ Butt Numbers Directed evolution at a scale of tens to thousands of years. Alien Appearance Remember Us Not too much to ask, really. We could have had a worse run.

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon Kingsman: The Secret Service What: Gentlemen spies fight with umbrellas. Directed by: Matthew Vaughn Starring: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Caine, Mark Strong Recommended and Related Media Kingsman: not so secret effects A write-up on the VFX from the film. Especially you should take a look at the it on the church, including a video. Impressive what they were able to pull off! Read it FXGuide Science Fiction Film Podcast – Arrival The SFFP episode in which they cover the excellent Arrival and recommend our own show. Thanks guys! Listen LSG Media Show Notes Gaia Hypothesis The idea that the biosphere self-regulates to support life. Does it hold up? Civilization Reboot Sim cards. Better ways to select the humans that will survive. Minimum populations. Oddjob with swordlegs Sword legs! Cleaving humans not just through but vertically. Prosthetic feet/legs Butts! And their utility for distance running. Hugh Herr and awesome climbing feet. Augmented Reality Versus virtual reality. Physical positioning and orientation fudging in virtual and augmented reality shared spaces. Rainbows End. HoloLens. Church Scene It’s so good! Also: long shots, real or otherwise. The Culling SIM card splodeyheads. Transcranial direct current stimulation. To cull, or not to cull.   Feedback? Please Contact Us contact@decipherscifi.com Amazon and iTunes links include our affiliate codes. If you wouldn’t mind helping us out a tiny bit, go ahead and use them to buy/stream something. Thanks!

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon The Expanse Season 2 What: Sciencey spacey stuff from the second season of The Expanse, a show about humanity spread across the solar system, and political strife between Earth, Mars and the asteroid belt. Featuring guest co-host Fraser Cain of Universe Today Recommended and Related Media Frasier’s things This guy really keeps busy. All of his various outlets are recommended! Universe Today is the best place for space news here Astronomy Cast is a really great learning resource for astronomy here Fraser’s YouTube features a bunch of great new space content, often here Language & The Expanse (feat. Nick Farmer, Linguist) : Episode 46 Our friend Nick created the Belter language on The Expanse. We talked with him a while back all about Language on The Expanse and in general. Check out the episode Show Notes Falling into the sun Why not dump all of our nuclear waste there? Shedding orbital velocity. Eros the magic space potato. Martian Gravity Our lack of understanding irl of whether humans can conceive and gestate and grow in low or microgravity. Centrifugal artificial gravity. Epstein Drive Pulling Gs. Human limits. Exciting times Finally we’re in a place that we’re taking space settlement for granted. Developments in space travel like the Falcon Heavy et al. Recently, Stratolaunch: Settlement issues Fragility of interconnected systems at small scale. Radiation. Living inside a big rock. Venus Venus sucks. Mostly. On the surface, at least. Soviet Venus missions. Turning Venus into a spaceship. Solar Energy Harvesting and limiting solar exposure in different parts of the solar system. Relative solar intensity.  Feedback? Please Contact Us contact@decipherscifi.com Amazon and iTunes links include our affiliate codes. If you wouldn’t mind helping us out a tiny bit, go ahead and use them to buy/stream something. Thanks!

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon Midnight Special What: A father and son on the run from the government and a cult. Directed by: Jeff Nichols Starring: Michael Shannon, Joel Edgerton, Kirsten Dunst, Adam Driver, Jaeden Lieberher Recommended and Related Media Carl Sagan on Dimensions Arrival – part 1 : decipherSciFi Episode 64 One episode where we covered some similar material, on superdimensionality and the like. Check it out here Interstellar – part 2 : decipherSciFi Episode 39 Annnnnd another episode where we covered the superdimensionality schtick.

Get the movie: Amazon Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind What: In humanity’s tenuous recovery from their self-imposed apocalypse, the Princess Nausicaa fights for peace and to basically save the world. Directed by: Hayao Miyazaki Starring: Sumi Shimamoto, Mahito Tsujimura, Hisako Kyôda, Allison Lohman, Patrick Stewart, Uma Thurman, Edward James Olmos, Shia LaBeouf Featuring guest co-host Miles Greb, creator of the comic After the Gold Rush Recommended and Related Media Espers – From Nothing, Something Comes Miles’ latest comic – his first work in the fantasy genre. Now on Kickstarter! Check it out Kickstarter Show Notes Miyazaki recognition This is Miles’ favorite. Chris doesn’t generally love Miyazaki but really really loves Totoro. Environmentalism in Media Processing human-caused catastrophe. We previously explored this in our Godzilla episode with Miles. Miyazaki was inspired by Minamata disease. Aircraft irl Nausicaa glider! Rewilding The ways in which humanity is worse than poison. Thriving of wildlife in our absence. Predators. What is nature Colloquial definitions versus recognition that we are part of nature and not really separate from it. Technology Anxiety Nuclear power safety and the negative effects of fossil fuels. Recognizing the relative safeness and harm. Being responsible with our technology. Preservation Of knowledge and technology over epochal time. Infrastructure and production. The scientific method as essential technology. Feedback? Please Contact Us contact@decipherscifi.com Amazon and iTunes links include our affiliate codes. If you wouldn’t mind helping us out a tiny bit, go ahead and use them to buy/stream something. Thanks!

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon Prometheus What: An origin story for humans. And some other species. Directed by: Ridley Scott Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce, Logan Marshall-Green Recommended and Related Media Messages for the Future On sending messages to the stars   Show Notes Love and hate A story of love for Prometheus with recognition of its faults. Surprisingly high tomato ratings. So much stuff to think about? Seeding Earth Natural selection, evolution, and engineers seeding life on Earth. This would require seeding all life on earth, to explain our shared genetic heritage with everything else that lives here. Objective-based evolution In this movie, I guess Lamarck Was Right. Continued Egineer presence over the course of the history of life on earth, guiding things toward their goals in order to make us like them. The Engineers Yoked as hell. Albinos with allopecia. Cave Paintings List of cultures visited. Radiocarbon dating (carbon-14). Uranium dating. Informational density. Star Maps Constellations and hemispheres and directions to solar systems. Alien System FTL. Moons and ringed planets. How not to safely approach and explore a new planet/moon. “Eh, seems fine” as a modus operandi for your space exploration mission. Alien Pregnancy Parasites. Superparasites, Tearing the umbilical cord. Placenta. Feedback? Please Contact Us contact@decipherscifi.com Amazon and iTunes links include our affiliate codes. If you wouldn’t mind helping us out a tiny bit, go ahead and use them to buy/stream something. Thanks!

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon Guardians of the Galaxy What: Charming rag-tag group of unlikely heroes unite to… guard the galaxy. From evil things. Directed by: James Gunn Starring: Chris Pratt, Vin Diesel, Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana, Lee Pace, Dave Bautista Recommended and Related Media A video on Marvel color-grading Guardians of the Galaxy 2 You should know that this sequel exists. (Pre)Order it iTunes | Amazon Show Notes A bit of review Because we really enjoyed this movie. The team A human, a green humanoid, an enhanced raccoon, Drax, and a hypermobile hyperintelligent tree. Rocket Raccoon Cybernetic skeletons. Animal intelligence. Cognitive enhancement and different types of intelligence. Drax Kinda like a grey hulk. Putting our lack of comics expertise on display. Groot How plants work. Nitrogen from the air making 50% of tree biomass. Plant regeneration and communication. Language considerations! Yay! Possible layers of complexity under “I am Groot.” The different ways that could or could not represent language. The complexity of metaphors and similar linguistic mechanisms, and how Drax’s people could lack understanding. Thermians. Tamarians. Old Terran technology Chris Pratt’s cassette tapes. Batteries. Audio cassette technology. Wearing oxides and tape-stretching. Feedback? Please Contact Us contact@decipherscifi.com Amazon and iTunes links include our affiliate codes. If you wouldn’t mind helping us out a tiny bit, go ahead and use them to buy/stream something. Thanks!

Stream it: Amazon Oasis (Amazon Original Pilot) What: A Chaplain is called to help out on a space settlement. Based on Michel Faber’s ‘The Book of Strange New Things’. Directed by: Kevin Macdonald Starring: Richard Madden, Flora Spencer-Longhurst, Moshidi Motshegwa, Haley Joel Osment Recommended and Related Media Oasis The show we’re covering on the episode! Stream it | Amazon Veritasium and Minute Physics on Magnets Show Notes Amazon Pilot Model Amazon’s practice of putting out a pile of different pilots and letting the cream rise via actual user data. London 2032 Environmental collapse. Precipitous economic drop, at least locally. Population collapse maybe? Space is big The Oasis settlement is on “the edge of the galaxy.” That’s really far! Nearest edge to Earth still thousands of lightyears. So, magic FTL. Stasis and muscle-wasting. FTL comms may be couriered by the ships. Preacher man The role of a man of God on a space station where resources are scarce and engineers are in high demand. The Oasis Settlement Not as advertised! We’re still in the early stages of building Elysium here; it’s still being settled. Gravity and weather systems and water. Tectonic activity and proximity to other bodies. Breathable atmospheres and how they get there. One-way trips Expense and complexity of designing for return trips in space travel. The nature of the magic FTL seems to still need normal rocket launches to get up there. Processing passenger vessels for materials. *Ponics Hydroponics. Aeroponics. Lower energy and water requirements, fine control of variables. Haley Joel is our Mark Watney botanist. Space Dementia Ala Armageddon? Mundane explanations, Occam’s Razor, and magnets. Or supernatural. We’ll see! Magnets. How do they work? Please see the Veritasium and Minute Physics videos above. This has little (nothing) to do with Oasis, really, but it’s a cool thing we wanted to share.

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon The Prestige What: Magic and obsession and Tesla and scifi all happen and it’s really just excellent. Directed by: Christopher Nolan Starring: Huge Jackedman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson Recommended and Related Media The Prestige – Hiding in Plain Sight by nerdwriter The Trouble with Teleporters by CGP Grey Show Notes This movie is so good! Just a warning: we really think you should watch this before listening to the episode. It’s so good! Magic as skeptical training Taking advantage of human intuition. Taking advantage of our sensory aparatus. Inoculating against credulity and being fooled. Penn & Teller Excellent showmen who have been at it forever and who are just great. They are “honest liars” and a lot of their media is great training in cognitive biases. Saving people from drowning Attempts to derive scientific guidelines for chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to save drowning victims might go back further than you’d expect. Tesla David Bowie as the perfect dandy to play the rather dandy-ish Tesla. Modern railguns might be in a similar vein to Tesla’s “Death Ray” Taming electricity The wonderment of the period. Misconceptions about the rivalry between Tesla and Edison. Dedication and obsession and sacrifice The difference between simple and easy. Going over the top to solve a problem with technology where it isn’t necessary. Feedback? Please Contact Us contact@decipherscifi.com Amazon and iTunes links include our affiliate codes. If you wouldn’t mind helping us out a tiny bit, go ahead and use them to buy/stream something. Thanks!

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon Ghost in the Shell [2017] What: Scarlett Johansson-bot kicks a bunch of butt and questions the nature of self and it’s all very pretty. Directed by: Rupert Sanders Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano Featuring guest co-host Jolene Creighton, managing editor at Futurism.com Recommended and Related Media Ghost in the Shell The real Ghost in the Shell movie. Whatever the quality of the new film, it at the very least puts a spotlight on all the great and beautiful stuff the original did. Watch it iTunes | Amazon Ghost in the Shell : decipherSciFi Episode 15 From wayyyy back in the day. I think we did a pretty good job covering this really important movie. Get the thing decipherSciFi Measure of a Man – Star Trek TNG Picard helps us answer questions about the nature of self and humanity. Watch it iTunes | Amazon Show Notes Future City Where is this movie taking place? Was it made explicit? We’re thinking neo-Tokyo but what’s really interesting is the lengths they went to in order to make New Zealand look like a retro-futuristic Asian city. Cyberpunk Roots in Neuromancer etc. The rising Asian power of the period (Japan) and the mixing of western and eastern aesthetics. Robots! And robot materials. Robot doctors. Metamaterials. Biorobots and cyborgs. Metal vs biomech. Blending in. Squishiness. Robot eyes Networked AR lens implants. Batou had a whole suite of EM filters! Thermal, night vision, and x-ray. X-ray! Otherwise known as “cancer mode.” How x-rays work and the danger he must posing to everyone around him. Invisibility Cloaks Harry potter and Predator. First Predator vision, now predator invisisuit! Bending different frequencies of light around objects cloaked with metamaterials. Memory and Self Memory “glitch” medication. Implanting learning. Wiping memories and adapting brains to new bodies. Man  vs Machine The potential foreignness of artificial intelligence. The human brain as a meaning-making machine. Melding with the machines. Nature of Self And dualism and the great questions raised in the original film.  Feedback? Please Contact Us

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon I Am Legend What: Will Smith is lonely in the post-apocalypse and fights zompires. Directed by: Francis Lawrence Starring: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan Featuring guest co-host Nick Farmer, author and creator of The Expanse’s Belter language Recommended and Related Media The Survivors by Nick Farmer Nick’s book – alternative perspective with ideas quite in the ballpark of I Am Legend (the novel). Read it Amazon The Expanse The really really great hard scifi show featuring Nick’s Belter conlang. We talked all about it on our Mostly-linguistics episode.

The Movie: iTunes | Amazon Life (2017) What: The crew of the ISS faces the first life discovered from outside of Earth. Directed by: Daniel Espinosa Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rebecca Ferguson, Ryan Reynolds, Hiroyuki Sanada, Ariyon Bakare, Olga Dihovichnaya Recommended and Related Media Alien The other (classic) movie where folks are trapped on a ship with an alien. It also goes badly. Watch it again because it’s so great iTunes | Amazon What if… orbital speed? “It’s hard to get to orbit because you have to go so fast.” Also, this: Show Notes The International Space Station Crew of six. Highly trained to do space stuff and… study aliens? Crazy crane-arms. Is this the future? Near-future? Referencing the challenger explosion. A survey of the evidence and the answer: basically this must be taking place now. World population: 8 billion! Origins of alien life Looked rather similar to life on our own planet. Common origins. Panspermia. Or is life typical in the universe, and life as we understand it is a somewhat typical example? Time in space In the movie Jake Gyllenhaal claims 473 days in space. That’s a lot! NASA Twin study. This alien Wow what a bastard this alien is. “Just trying to survive.” Pluripotency and cell specialization.  A brain made of muscles. “A giant piece of murder muscle.” A jet plane made of biceps. One cell Kill it with fire! Literal firewalls. Temperatures of incinerators. Could we burn it up by tossing it down into the atmosphere (hot!). Kill it with space! Give that alien some space. Aliens love space. Plan B: Screw it! Push it and they and everything into space! But is the math in the ballpark of reasonable? Escape velocities from earth’s surface vs the ISS. Feedback? Please Contact Us contact@decipherscifi.com Amazon and iTunes links include our affiliate codes. If you wouldn’t mind helping us out a tiny bit, go ahead and use them to buy/stream something. Thanks!

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon Armageddon What: