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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

32:57

Prospect: sleep rhythm, amputation, and meat-sack...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/03/12

Indie scifi Impressive shoestring productions. Remembering Moon. Lived-in duct-tape science fiction. Sleep cycles Circadian rhythms. Setting our clocks by light exposure. Light exposure and activity levels. Wearing your sunglasses at night. Different varieties of blindness and sleep rhythms. Retinal sensitivity to light. Space prospectin’ Alien meat-testicle gems. Personal testicular security systems. Organic gemstones. Pearl production. How attractive our kidney stones might be to alien

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44:16

Superman IV: Superman hair materials science,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/03/05

A review This was the best worst thing we’ve ever seen. I’m sorry. You’re welcome? Space tricks Leaving whole rocket stages to just kinda be in orbit and hit stuff. Talking in space by providing your own atmosphere thanks to your incredible, super lung capacity. Also, how that doesn’t work and Superman needs to be a close talker and hold conversations by vibrating his mouth directly on someone else’s spacesuit helmet. Superman bodily materials The hair that can hold at least a half ton

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36:31

The Wandering Earth: altered goldilocks zones,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/02/26

Life and death of a star A hundred years to uninhabitability is a little bit quicker than we thought. Timelines here to red dwarf and all the unpleasantness in between. Probing your star The surprising difficulty of actually reaching the sun. The Parker Solar Probe. Taking a close peek at the corona and the young solar wind. Close as in millions of miles. Moving Earth Shifting circumstellar habitability zones. Moving the planet out nearer Jupiter as our sun expands. Throwing moderation to

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44:28

Q&A #4: Answering your questions and appreciating our...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/02/19

You folks asked us a bunch of questions. And we gave a bunch of answers! I’ll leave the actual Questions and Answers to be listened to in the episode, but we did mention some resources etc which I’ll link below… Past History coverage To whet your appetite if you’re as excited as us about the possibility of Decipher History: Outlander with Lee from Viking Age Podcast The Mummy and Stargate with Dominic Perry from History of Egypt Podcast And a bunch of things like Conan the

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54:18

The Expanse Season 3: low-g gardening, high-g...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/02/12

Past coverage We like this show lots! Thus, our continuing coverage: The Expanse: Nick Farmer on conlanging and the intersection of language and scifi The Expanse VFX: an interview with Cailin Munroe, VFX Producer The Expanse Season 2: falling into the sun, martian gravity, and human g-force limits w/ Fraser Cain Difficulties The oft-overlooked actual difficulties of space settlement. Not technology and logistics, but like, how hard it will likely be for the humans doing the job at

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50:21

Total Recall - top-notch Arnold, muscle memory, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/02/05

Man meat Ahhhhnold! Your average Joe, working construction just like any other regular guy who is a giant bodybuilding monster-person. We really missed this in our coverage of Total Recall 2012. Memory Memory “insertion” and memory “deletion” or “blocking” in mouse studies. The great distance from where we are now to trivial memory “vacations” a la Recall. Semantic memory, autobiographical memory, and muscle memory. Tracking devices Ideal tracking-implantation locations. The incredible

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40:48

They Shall Not Grow Old: film restoration,...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/01/29

Review Well, we don’t normally do this sorta thing, but oh man this was so good! What the film is about, how it is about, and why it was so special. Appreciating those who do the best work of making history relatable (cough Dan Carlin cough). Restoration Film degradation. Scratching, exposure, shrinkage, physical tearing. The crapshoot that is video frame rates in early 20th century film footage. Crank cameras and gearing and compressed-air constant-framerate cameras. Correcting for all of

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39:47

2036 Origin Unknown: ion propulsion, dust storms, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/01/22

Ion Drive Compounding acceleration in the relative vacuum of space. Incredible efficiencies versus chemical rockets, and the very low force produced making it only appropriate once spaceborn. The differing problems solved by chemical rockets and ion drives. The benefit of ion drive once out of Earth’s gravity well and going far away. Earth’s tectonic plates, slowly building up to escape velocity. That beautiful blue glow. “Ionic wind” aircraft in-atmosphere: a completely silent aircraft motor

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36:38

Total Recall 2012: falling through the planet, 3d...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/01/15

Philip K Dick Giving’em the old Philip K Dick joint. Cyberpunk. Adaptation fidelity. Even though it looks like it’s the future… Luminescent tattoos! Bioluminescence, electroluminescence, phosphorescence, and maybe some other -escences too! A world with three boobs. Well, maybe more than that in the whole world. Hand phones. Ubiquitous smart glass. Neck-mounted face-replacing direct-eye laser projectors. Memory manipulation and deletion. “The Fall” Digging a hole through the Earth. Trying

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45:26

The Predator: glistening biceps, savant syndrome, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2019/01/08

Action heroes Glistening, rippling man-meat. Sweaty pecs. Aggressive handshakes with biceps the size of coconuts. Longing for the good old days. Feeling unjustified disappointment when our heroes aren’t giant walking meat monsters. The inapplicability of the bodybuilder physique to actually getting hero stuff done. Bodylifting. Savantism “Savant syndrome is a condition in which someone with significant mental disabilities demonstrates certain abilities far in excess of average” -Wiki. As

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31:02

Doctor Who: the Y2K scare, supernumerary hearts, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/12/31

Doctor Who Not a lot of Doctor Who experience at the table here. Recognition of the Moffat era. Finding a single, self-contained Who unit to use as an entrée. James McAvoy. Millenium Pedantic note: the millenium wouldn’t really start until 2001. Colbert gets to be the jerk for once. Y2K Numeronyms. Alternate terms: CDC, FADL. How we got here (there, then?). Limits on data storage and memory over time that make two-digit date storage actually seem kinda reasonable. Y2K38, aka the Unix

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40:21

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Dolphin...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/12/24

Adaptations Appreciating the book(s). Bigtime. Adapting Douglas Adams. Remembering the text adventure video game exists. Dolphins Dolphin intelligence. It’s not about how smart they are, it’s about how they’re smart. Mammalian sameness as an avenue into better understanding life in the sea. Dolphin communication. Dolphin “language” and the possibility of translation. The Dolphin C.H.A.T. interface. Betelgeuse Big star! Red supergiant, 9th brightest in our sky. “Brightness” outside the

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54:29

Akira: mind bullets, evolution, and odd horsepower...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/12/18

Akira Hey this movie was really important! Time and place. Budgets. Omg so pretty. Subtitles Subtitling adult anime for the west. Translation vs localization. Different industries and approaches to localization. Software localization in comparison to film localization. Fansubs online before the likes of Crunchyroll. Motorcycles Horsepower! Sweet motorcycles. High-speed motorcycle attacks. Turning people into “mushwater.” Funiculars giant slidey freight elevators. Also mountainside

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37:32

Close Encounters: alien contact, debunking, and music...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/12/11

Contact “Levels” of alien contact. Converting anal probes and sex bases to contact “levels.” First kind: visual contact Second kind: evidence of contact Third kind: in-person contact The Devil’s Tower How to pronounce butte. Convention vs personal preference. The awesome nature of structures like The Devil’s Tower, jutting up all inaccessible as they are. Translation errors for fun and profit. Thinking back to Schiaparelli’s canals. Geological origins: igneous intrusions and volcanic

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41:30

The Titan: adapting vs terraforming Titan, individual...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/12/04

Titan The most interesting moon ‘round Saturn! Viewing the moon Titan by eye or by telescope. Protip: bincolulars are actually just two tiny telescopes. Saturn The Saturnian hexagonal storm vs the larger Jovian storm. Latitudinal wind gradients. Adaptation Adapting the world to our needs. The possibility of adapting ourselves to a world. Inhospitality. Ethiopian, Tibetan, and Andean elevation adaptation. Andean vampires? Titan Habitability Atmosphere. Temperature. Breathability. Tidal

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36:02

Blade: blood, colloidal silver aposematism, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/11/27

Blade Enthusiasm! Silver Weaponizing silver. Colloidal silver. Papa Smurf. Blue anti-vampire aposematism. Agyria a la Paul Karason aka Papa smurf. Spray defense Pepper spray. Garlic spray. The difference between bear spray and self-defense pepper spray. The positives and negatives of fog-mode sprays in vampire club fighting. Johnny Knoxville pain ratings. Scoville units Laboratory capsaicin measurement by high-performance liquid chromatography vs the organoleptic method. The obvious

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47:13

I Origins: rationality, eyeballs, and biometric ID w/...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/11/20

Eyeball anatomy All the important parts, wherever they are! Who really cares anyway we’re only here for two in particular: the iris and the retina. The retinal blind spot. Creationism And intelligent design. Are wrong. Reaching conclusions and working backwards for fun and profit. Young Earth creationism. Dan’s religious upbringing. Irreducible complexity. Faulty reasoning. The evolution of the modern vertebrate eyeball Fish and their goofy eyeball arrangements. The crazy Charlie eyeball

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43:29

The Meg: claspers, megalodon teeth, and shark...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/11/13

Sharks A sharky public service message/pro-shark propaganda. Sharks get a bad wrap in the media. Eating weird stuff. The importance of sharks in the ocean and their roles in their particular ecosystems. Shark behaviour Biting the internet. Alternative shark species name suggestions. “Exploratory” biting. Claspers! The Megalodon’s likely “biiiiiiiiiig” penis. Shark skin with dermal denticles, aka “teeth paper.” Shark intelligence and how you might measure it. The Megalodon Irl best

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28:46

Decipher SciFi State of the Union 2018

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/11/08

In which we look at your survey responses and reveal where we’re headed in the coming year Listening habits RPG experience Nerd gatherings and meeting listeners irl Creator support LSG Media appreciation party Guest co-hosts Suggestion box Future expansion recommendations (Decipher History!?) Support the show!

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43:36

Sorry to Bother You: code switching, indie media, and...

Decipher SciFi ·

2018/11/06

This movie It gets a bit weird! And we have a bit of a time summarizing it. Storytelling Adventure stories. Social allegory. The power of science fiction in particular to force you to reframe your perception by believably breaking your assumptions. HG Wells and Moreau. Science fiction tropes and the subversion thereof. Christopher is bad at human things. Code Switching Languages, dialect, and speaking to your audience. “Not having to think about it.” Media Mass media vs indie

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269 results

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