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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

49:09

Ad Astra: nuclear spaceships, the edge of the solar...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/12/17

Science…?! Some things are more art than science sometimes. Structures anchored to geostationary orbit “Space antennas” but what kind of signal would benefit from this design? X-Rays? Why would this not be better off in orbit? The structure sure looks a lot like a space elevator. Space elevators and geostationary orbital masses. Falling from space It’s hard to steer without sufficient atmospheric density. Felix Baumgartner’s jump “from space.” High energy blasting Antimatter nonsense

en-US

38:04

Spider-Man Far From Home: Venice, burying forests,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/12/10

VPNs MJ’s VPN advice. VPN advertising on YouTube. Venice How to build a whole city on mud. Transplanting alder forests from on some ground to under some other ground. Hard clay is worse than bedrock. Measuring a sinking city’s rate of subsidence with space-based radar and GPS. Climate change sure isn’t helping any. What value should we place on artifacts of human civilization? Losing UNESCO world heritage sites. The MOSE project. Climate change and rising sea levels. What will the world do?

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30:09

Thor Dark World: Finnish-ish, amphetamines, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/12/03

Background Looking back after the culmination of all these threads in Endgame. Queen Amidala’s midichlorian magical umbrella. Language Thor knowing All-Tongue, emitting pheromones, and doing the bee dance. The difficutly of universal language or language understanding. Finnishish conlanging. The cultural and linguistic juxtaposition between Scandinavia and Finland. Alignment of worlds Astrology is bunkum nonsense gobbledegook. The miniscule and generally unimportant effects when bodies in

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43:43

The Mandalorian: modern mythology, space toilets, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/11/26

Western The best genre of Star Wars media? Brandishing yourself. Old west forced sack removal. “Real filmmaking” Werner Herzog’s surprising(?) praise. “Real filmmaking” in the wake of the prequel trilogies. Wooden green-screen acting vs sweet puppets and actual human beings. Unreal Engine LED walls and volumetric projection and camera tracking. Our new mythology Star Wars as our new shared cultural mythology the world over. Concern about disney’s stewardship and the private ownership of

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35:08

Venom: comets, Von Neumann goo, and the alien brown note

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/11/19

Decontamination protocols NASA’s irl de-contamination measures. Private space industry without apparent government oversight. Comets Some of the oldest things in our solar system and maybe the oldest things that we can reach. Leftovers from early solar system formation. The possibility of finding the precursors of life. Delineating between comets and asteroids. Fuzzy definitions. “Extinct” comets. Scales & tails. Von Neumann Goo Sending out of infected ice-balls and hoping someone

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01:04:59

Terminator Dark Fate: surprises, developing humanity,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/11/12

Hey so we covered the entirety of the Terminator series in the past few months and it was really fun! The Terminator: bootstrapping, machine uprising, and time traveling meatballs w/ Joe Ruppel Terminator 2: advanced puppetry, Skynet, and liquid nitrogen handling w/ Joe Ruppel Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines: hacking cars and supercomputing Skynet FLOPS w/ Joe Ruppel Terminator Salvation: body donation, realistic time travel, and the legal shmegal defense w/ Joe Ruppel Terminator

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38:48

Men in Black International: Eiffel, backfilling...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/11/05

Eiffel LPT: you can get pommes frites in Europe. Could Eiffel have been an agent? The history of the Eiffel tower. The Eiffel Tower’s science history. Cosmic rays. Wireless telepraphy (radio). Outliving its intended lifespan. Aliens Which government agency should you be applying to in order to research alien stuff? Remembering the MiB is an NGO. Space tracking Increasing ability to track nearby space objects. Tracking objects in our solar system’s plane. The difficulty of tracking

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25:25

Star Trek Voyager: water, galactic scales, and coffee...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/10/29

Setup Cross-galaxy teleportation macguffins. The Delta quadrant. Where are the Borg!? Species The Kazon, aka less-good, less-organized Klingons. Were Klingons racist? Or the Ferengi? Or the Kazons? Water The availability of water in star systems. Exoplanet surveys and water-rich gas giants. Voyager Yay Janeway! Comparing with the original actress. Imagining a Star Trek/Too Many Cooks crossover. Replicators and teleporters The most incredible Star Trek technology of all. Teleporter

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01:43

On Decipher History: The Patriot

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/10/22

The taste of another episode of Decipher History! Featuring some over-the-top colonial heroism, etc The Patriot: heroism, invisible slavery, and cutting-edge chair technology Support the show!

en-US

28:57

Godzilla King of the Monsters: acoustic...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/10/15

Titans Awaking dormant giant monsters from within the Earth. Bio-acoustic signatures. Giant balloons! Tracking elephants by sound. Pre-civilization civilizations The Silurian hypothesis thought experiment, especially as part of our Atlantis coverage. The increasing disappearability of the details of civilization as they raise their technological level. Moths Moths: way better than butterflies! Echolocation defense mechanisms. Corresponding bat appreciation in our A Quiet Place episode

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48:34

Terminator Genisys: surprise anthologies & time...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/10/08

The curse of the Terminator Why do all these production companies go under after making these always-profitable Terminator movies? VFX Twelve months to make a fake Arnold. Time travel Time travel but, like, way more confusing. And possibly nonsensical. Five movie in and we FINALLY we see a time machine. Operation Cronos. Trying to count timelines and getting very confused because they broke everything. Skynet Skynet in the government shadows vs Silicon Valley public launch.

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02:02

On Decipher History: Gangs of New York

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/10/01

The taste of another episode of Decipher History! Featuring gangs fights in 19th century New York, etc. On Decipher History: Gangs of New York: history of The Five Points, immigration, and archaic criminal lingo Support the show!

en-US

50:25

Terminator Salvation: body donation, realistic time...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/09/24

Is this a sequel? A prequel? Our progress in covering the entire Terminator series. The possibility of the future war trilogy, dashed. Body donation Donating your body to science. Body donation vs organ donation. Size and BMI standards. Medical education via cadaver. “Body brokers.” Why do blast testing on bodies? Are we learning to cure “acute dynamitism?” Lethal injection How to make a body unsuitable for whole-body donation. Donating to Terminator-science. Executions as disincentive. The

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30:33

Species: alien bio-containment, the Arecibo message,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/09/17

Species Wow there some really good movies in 1995! Geiger alien designs. Not “Alien,” but “alien.” This time, with nipples. Ptosis Forrest Whitaker. Chris’s history of eyelid laziness variability. Being either a dolphin or a flamingo. Eye farts? The Arecibo Message The limited utility of sending messages to aliens 25,000 light years away. The Arecibo Message sent in 1974 toward the M13 globular cluster. A cluster containiner millions of stars. 1679 bits: not a lot of bits! A

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43:59

Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines: hacking cars and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/09/10

Meta James Cameron blank checks and record-breaking budgets and payouts. Arnold Getting re-jacked to your original shape at 56 years old. Screening your movie at Saddam’s palace. Terminators The broadness of the term “nanotechnology.” Upgrading your liquid-metal nanotechss32 robots. Data Collection Placing this movie in the data collection timeline: after the dawn of big data digital government spying, but before smartphones when we willingly began to give up all the data. But there’s

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03:27

On Decipher History: The Last Samurai w/ Isaac Meyer

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/09/03

A small taste of our new episode of Decipher History to remind you to subscribe to the new show. This week featuring our new friend Isaac Meyer from The History of Japan Podcast! Support the show!

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01:09:03

Roundtable: Colossus The Forbin Project w/ Chris...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/08/27

Weirdly prescient and quietly influential AI portrayal in film. Recognizing 2001: A Space Odyssey. Command and control. Unintended consequences. Personal movie connections and impact decades before Bostrom’s Superintelligence. Game of Thrones??? 70s scifi cynicism. Benevolent AI dictator The Cold War and looming climate catastrophe. What are Colossus’ goals? What goals does it think it has? AI Portrayal Period conceptions of computing as centralized and institutional. Computing in the era

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51:50

Terminator 2: advanced puppetry, Skynet, and liquid...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/08/20

People Love and appreciation for the humans involved. James Cameron is amazing. Arnold, always our favorite. Linda Hamilton playing one of the most iconic characters in film. Robert Patrick doing the robot. James Cameron doing everything himself. VFX VFX and CG and the high shot counts for the time. The expense of CG and the appropriate use thereof. Budgets. Incredible animatronix! The value of high-quality practical FX from the 90s and how they hold up. Ict hot stuntaz Motorcycle

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37:42

Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse: particle colliders,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/08/13

Colliders Particle collider scales. Increasing energies. Finding the Higgs Boson. Different ways of smashing things. Straight colliders, ring colliders, and rings so large they kinda seem straight at a certain scale. Adrian’s new area of expertise. “Natural experiments” in particle physics. Imagining future colliders and subsequent discoveries. Confirmation of supersymmetry. Probing the edges of the standard model. Collider danger Stragelets and black holes and other things that won’t happen

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42:46

The Terminator: bootstrapping, machine uprising, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/08/06

People James Cameron’s first film! And Arnold is amazing! The possibility of casting O.J. Simpson as the T-100. Harlan Ellison lawsuit. Robots The thawing of the AI winter of the 70s. Robots finally showing up in our lives and in the workplace. Terminator bootstrapping. Robotics and machine learning. Skynet The possibility of AI becoming “self-aware” or “conscious” and whether we even know what those things really mean. Big data feeding skynet. Terminators Jacked-up and oiled beefcake

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269 results

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