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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

31:40

Lockout: plagiarism, space shuttle design, and how to...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/07/30

Plagiarism John Carpenter, this movie, and Escape from New York plagiarism. Metal Gear Solid also as an Escape ripoff. Running popular media through a “Hideo Kojima filter” to see what comes out. Space Shuttles Side-mounting your spacecraft. Flying a brick. Deorbiting and landing in the space shuttle’s “orbiter.” Wiggle-worm descent. Having only one chance because all of your fuel was spent getting out of orbit. Returning to shuttle-like designs with mag-lev mountain-ramps. Inert gas

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30:02

Rocky IV: sports science, brain injury, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/07/23

Forces Height and reach advantage and impossible momentary punching force. Punching with horsepower vs just straight up hitting people with horses. ‘Murrica James Brown and showboat Apollo. The Khaleesi naming scheme. Sports Science The rising tide of money in sports. The “big bang of body types.” Steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. Brain Injury The particular badness of boxing for brain damage. The possible safety increase in taking off the gloves in MMA. Just about any

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41:52

First Man: moon rocks, moon lasers, and the edge of...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/07/16

One Small Step Worrying the minimum amount about your speech. The difficulty of quoting noisy radio transmissions. Because it is haaaahd Recognizing the small temporal distance from the first powered flight to the first moon landing. The cutting edge of the early space program. Test piloting. Gemini. The edge of space Defining the edge of space. The “Karman Line”: transition from atmospheric lift to orbital velocity. Complications and redefinition of where “space” begins. Geopolitics,

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34:00

Alita Battle Angel: cybernetic cyborgs,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/07/09

Alita “The movie with the cyborgs and the kicking and the punching.” There are two kinds of film: people in a room talking and people in a room kicking and punching. Robert Rodriguez lands firmly within only one of these groups. Accidentally fitting Alita into the Robocop universe. Shooting and punching people in their robo-bits. Cyborgs Robots arms everywhere. But maybe not just for show? Cyborg arms as the cyborg future cliche. Replacing your limbs proactively for fun and profit. Replacing

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30:22

Reign of Fire: types of dragons, animals that...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/07/02

‘Murrica Jacked Christian Bale, Scottish Gerard Butler, and brash American hero Matthew McConaughey. Fighting a dragon with an axe. Appreciating the brash American caricature. Dragons Dragon VFX. Drawing the line from here to Game of Thrones. Animals that use a spray attack (or defense). Skunks, ants, horned lizard, snakes, even bombardier beetles and their boiling butt juices. Dragon classification (vs wyverns, etc). Fire etc Actual napalm is a hell of a thing. Remember the Anarchist’s

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33:50

Battlestar Galactica: curse words linguistics, formal...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/06/25

Review Battlestar was so good! The importance of Ronald D Moore’s work on Deep Space Nine. The genesis of the “gritty” scifi drama juxtaposed against Star Trek’s utopia. Judging the best scifi captains: Adama? Picard? Frak! The difficulties with “frak.” “Fraking” vs “fracking.” Changes of spelling. Designing the curse words of scifi futures. Appreciating Nick Farmer’s “Belter.” The nature of “swear words.” Comparing the sounds of made-up brand names to test linguistic form/function

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37:48

Black Mirror Season 5: dishwashers, sex stuff, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/06/18

Striking Vipers Human sexuality The bright and exciting future of who does what with whom and how. Polar bears. How we might have handles this VR technology as teenagers. Colbert is the bear Gaming Nostalgia for days-long gaming binges with Doritos and Easy Cheese. Ubiquitous full-spectrum VR experience. Neural mapping. Popular physics plugins , game engines, and the possibility that McCallister and Striking Vipers etc run on the same software. Bodily bacteria Dirt

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01:09:57

300: professional soldiers, the Spartan Mirage, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/06/11

This film Zach Snyder’s strengths in creating comic book panels on film. Slo-mo blood spatter. Abs and glistening man-meat. Western civilization Ancient Greece and “western civilization.” The birth of “democracy” in nearby Athens. Juxtaposing your historical culture with the “other.” Like George Washington crossing the Delaware but with way less man-meat. And 100% less codpieces. Sparta The dawn on the Spartan state. The nature of the Helot slave class. “Land-bonded” slavery vs chattel

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30:38

Automata: desertification, solar storms, and messing...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/06/04

Robot laws Asimov’s laws as a storytelling device and what you get when you alter the formula. “Humans are the true robots.” Automata The difference between “automata” and “robots.” Ancient Greek, Arab, and medieval church automata. Automata and robots making humans realize we need to explain what makes us special. Realizing that, on the whole, we probably aren’t really. Cartesian dualism as a stop-gap measure. Moral progress. Appreciating that we stopped seeing other animals as automatons

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47:30

Star Trek IV - The Journey Home: whale margarine,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/05/28

Star Trek Best Star Trek movies. Liking things because they are familiar. The odd-even Star Trek movie rule. Mathematical proofs. Dismissing the reboots. Cosmic horror Giant cylinders and plumbuses. Finding out you are as an ant in the universe. Spreading across space and building giant robot suits to fight the larger incomprehensible creatures. Time travel Using time travel to solve problems despite the consequences. Time travel anachronism stories. Bad time-travel sales pitches. The

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42:25

Apocalypto: sacrificial practices, temples, and Mayan...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/05/21

Criticisms and controversy So yeah, Mel Gibson is bad. But then the movies are… really good? Trying to get past his framing. The tug of war between historical accuracy and entertainment. Anthropological criticism. Deciphering history The problem with burning nearly the entire written history of a people. Deciphering scant ancient texts. The remaining resources: art, stelae. Mayan hieroglyphic writing. Periods The Maya pre-classic, classic, and post-cassic periods. The scale of the height

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33:42

Game of Thrones: medieval weaponry, variable winters,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/05/14

In which we discuss Game of Thrones right before the finale The books Appreciating GRRM. And appreciating him double and triple as the show goes on. The setting The middle ages. The “dark ages” and how much is that a misnomer? Magic and dragons stagnating technological progress. Volcanoes beat dragons in rock-paper-scissors. Air force exclusivity. Ancient artillery. Ballistae and Scorpions and the peak of human weaponry until the weaponization of gunpowder. Winter is coming Figuring out

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37:00

Questions & Addenda #5: fermenting your pee, cute...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/05/07

We got so much feedback over time from supporter Jeremy that we’re dedicating a whole Questions & Addenda episode to covering them. Just like that one time. Star Wars: The Last Jedi [episode page] Guerilla space warfare. The Star Wars Geneva Convention. Chinese gun powder weaponization. Resources and impoetus in the development of killing technologies. Ready Player One [episode page] Speed-of-light internet latency. EVE online strategies for fun and profit. “Sharding” as first-named in

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38:40

Avengers Endgame: Appreciating the enormity of the MCU

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/04/30

A review Spoiler alert: we liked this movie Phase 1 Appreciating the establishment of the characters of Iron Man and Captain America. That grenade scene. Joss Whedon writing and directing teams of characters learning to work together. Realizing the first movie in the MCU came out in 2008. Realizing just how long ago 2008 was. Phase 2 James Gunn appreciation (ps Super was really really good!). Guardians introducing a new level of comedy into the MCU. Phase 3 Guardians dad feels. Our

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42:18

After Earth: pheromones, murder-birds, and language...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/04/23

This movie Not well reviewed. Will Smith’s “painful failure.” The real twist is the lack of explanation for things. Jaden Smith wisdom. Accent and language The future “language” in the film. The difference between accent and dialect. how languages change over time, by example. Trying to understand original spoken Shakespeare and generally succeeding. Trying to understand original spoken Beowulf and completely failing. The mutual intelligibility of Old Norse and Old English. Creatures

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52:57

Back to the Future Part II: time travel options,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/04/16

Likenesses The legal precedent set by Crispin Glover’s lawsuit against the production; folks are more careful these days as a result. “Grandma Tarkin.” Rick & Morty Rick & Morty’s original short lampooning Doc & Marty. The future The fun, friendly future where the alleyways are safer than the streets. Worrying about your future children and feeling disgusted by your teenage self. Pelvic thrusting fight technique. Daniel Barker, former scene kid Time travel

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42:35

Them!: nuclear optimism, amateur myrmecology, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/04/09

Rise of the nuclear monsters The era of nuclear nervousness and the nuclear monsters in cinema. “Take an object, and biggify it.” Nuclear power in the 1950s. The possibility of “unmetered” energy. White Sands, gypsum, and the Trinity test. Nuclear optimism The nuclear success hit list and the optimism of the early 50s. Recognizing downsides. Converting hydrogen into helium, but like really violently. Eclipses, occlusion, and we didn’t realize it at the time but Joe was right to use

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35:15

Aquaman: cetaceans, riding sea animals, and the bends

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/04/02

DCEU Aquaman as a sign of possibility the of interesting things going forward in the DC Extended Universe. Sexy Jason Mamoa. Underwater Superman. Atlantis Unlimited power when everyone else thought the world was flat. Appreciating the innovation that was realizing the Earth was mostly spherical. Ancient Greek steam turbans. Eating raw fish and seaweed. the origins of sushi. The careful application of lava for removing parasites. Sea mammals Underwater echolocation. Communication by sound

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55:17

The Matrix: green phosphors, neuroplasticity, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/03/26

This movie is awesome It is! And also we’re old. But honestly this is still unironically the best thing. The legacy of the Matrix. Falling back in love with the Wachowskis. Addressing the sequels. Cyberpunk The Matrix as cyberpunk. Comparing against other touchstones. Philip K Dick. William Gibson’s review from the time. When I began to write NEUROMANCER, there was no “cyberpunk”. THE MATRIX is arguably the ultimate “cyberpunk” artifact. Or will be, if the sequels don’t blow. I hope they

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33:41

Atlantis: the Silurian hypothesis, ancient language,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/03/19

Myth and history Getting past the nonsense. The reasonable idea that civilizations have in fact existed and then fallen, without notice by modern study. Rocking Like a Hurricane in the B.C. era. Human history irl Humanity circa 10,000 years ago. The beginnings of civilization. Early agriculture. Making beer and eventually bread. How not to make bread by putting beer in the oven. More Rocking Like a Hurricane. Just invent pants, beer, and bread and you’re off to a really solid start. “Why are

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269 results

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