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PODCAST

Decipher SciFi

Decipher SciFi explores the how and why in science fiction with conversations about technology, humanity, and the future. This is not a review show, nor will you see much criticism or snark. It is a rationally optimistic look, through film, at where society and technology are and where they are headed. Also, butts.

science film reviews

All Episodes

37:45

eXistenZ: reality testing, biocomputing, and gross stuff

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/10/30

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

en-US

41:27

Pacific Rim Uprising: drone jamming, the aircraft...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/10/23

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

en-US

44:42

Gravity: decompression sickness, orbital mechanics,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/10/16

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

en-US

40:58

Skyscraper: vertical cities, holodecks, and personal...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/10/09

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

en-US

49:36

Doom: moons of Mars, space marines, and telefragging...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/10/02

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

en-US

47:18

Upgrade: biohacking, AI containment, and paralyzation...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/09/25

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

en-US

30:03

Decipher RPG - Mirror Pilot #3 (the finale!)

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/09/19

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!

en-US

40:26

Black Panther: rhino domestication, click languages,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/09/18

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

en-US

01:05:27

Decipher RPG - Mirror Pilot #2

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/09/12

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!

en-US

55:07

Decipher RPG - Mirror Pilot #1

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/09/11

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!

en-US

29:49

A-X-L: dogs as technology, domestication, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/09/04

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

en-US

35:34

Rampage: gorilla sign language, classic gaming, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/08/28

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

en-US

34:06

Extinction: space stealth, leaving Earth, and the...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/08/21

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

en-US

49:58

Aliens: hyperlseep, how to terraform, and Blade...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/08/14

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

en-US

35:00

Wall-E: biodegradable plastics, waste management, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/08/07

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

en-US

52:22

Ready Player One: virtual reality haptics, digital...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/07/31

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

en-US

34:40

Man From Earth Holocene: hunter gatherer nostalgia...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/07/24

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

en-US

44:17

Predator : preposterone, light manipulation, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/07/17

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

en-US

50:20

Q&A #3: glacial surge, myth vs legend, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/07/10

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

en-US

40:40

A Quiet Place: echolocation, cochlear implant vs...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/07/03

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

en-US

269 results

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