decipher SciFi : the show about how and why

Get the movie: iTunes | Amazon Hidden Figures What: The story of a team of African-American women mathematicians and their contributions to the early American space program. Directed by:  Theodore Melfi Starring: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Kirsten Dunst,Kevin Costner, Aldis Hodge Featuring guest co-host Joe Ruppel, history nerd and our co-bff Recommended and Related Media Hidden Figures (the book) by Margot Lee Shetterly Like the movie but minus the time compression, plus a ton more depth. Read it with your eyes iTunes | Amazon Read it with your ears iTunes From the Earth to the Moon Apparently actually kinda hard to find streaming, this is the dramatized portrayal of the Apollo manned space program. Joe is a big fan. Get the thing Amazon Apollo 13 The true story of the several disasters that befell the Apollo 13 mission and the heroism in response. Stream it iTunes | Amazon Show Notes On voices My guest appearance talking about this film on the podcast Voices From L5. The women! The movie mostly follows three incredible women in particular. NACA/NASA This got left out of the movie, but the history of NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), then NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), is an important part of the story. Space Race Existential threats. Intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear submarines obviating much of the interest in basing nuclear weapons in space. Dangerous beeps and boops. Humans in Space Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space. Alan Shepard. National and global heroes. Space stuff is dangerous Flight testing is really unsafe. Redstone rockets. Space Competition National competition in the day, feels to us more healthy and global-cooperative these days. For now. Until it gets cheaper and there are resources to f...

  Featuring corrector -in-chief Adrian Falcone, general-purpose internet nerd So we made some mistakes on black holes and Schwarzschild radii and spacetime on our Q&A. And then Adrian sent in corrections. And then Adrian sent in corrections for his corrections which I used to correct his corrections. (⊙＿⊙’)

Q&A #1 What: Our first Q&A episode! Wherein we answer the MOST INTERESTING QUESTIONS FROM THE INTERNET! Show Notes “What would you do for immortality?” (Question from CF Villion on Twitter) Trolley problems. Types of immortality, especially “virtual” immortality. Consciousness uploading. “#SciFi #Space: what would happen if a #BlackHole showed up in our #SolarSystem?” (Question from Maxime Duprez on Twitter) Rogue black holes. Passing through the Kuiper belt. Or passing through the asteroid belt. The myriad ways in which this would totally mess up our solar system and probably kill us all. “In SciFi movies we are Earthlings but what about galaxy VS galaxy stuff. What would we be called? Cuz I’m not down with being called Milkies” (Question from Michael on Twitter) Earth-centric point-of-view. Milkies? Maybe the aliens can call us “milksopp.” Don’t forget there could be many many other intelligent species amongst the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, though. “What would an orbital battle be like?” (Question from John Freeman on Twitter) Messy. Defining what we mean by orbital. Flotsam and jetsam. Yet more references to Seveneves. Kinetic weaponry and orbital bombardment. “What would you do if you met yourself? Would be disappointed or in awe?” (Question by Nick Temple on Twitter) Not liking oneself from the outside. Antisocial magnets of the same polarity. “If you could have any creature as a pet from SciFi, what would it be?” (Question by Cameron on Twitter) Ethical implications with trying to take in a creature of unknown intelligence as a pet. Bad pets: Dune sandworms, “Why Hasn’t Some Disaster Destroyed The Earth?” (Question by MysticInvestigations on Twitter) Impactors. Protections offered by our moon, Jupiter, and other bodies in our solar system. The formation of our moon, with accretion disks and whatnot. “Which Newspeak word do you like most? Why?” (Question by David Rozansky) Doubleplus good. “Watching The Arrival. Why do artsy scifi movies have abstract expressionist art aliens? I mean sure, avoid lil green men, but featureless?” (Question by vgr on Twitter) We worked a lot out about the aliens from arrival in our two episodes.

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon The Space Between Us What: Tween love story in SPAAAAAAAACE and on MARRRRRRRRRS Directed by: Peter Chelsom Starring: Gary Oldman, Asa Butterfield, Britt Robertson, Carla Gugino Featuring guest co-host Chris Noessel, User Interface Expert from Sci-Fi Interfaces Recommended and Related Media Make it So by Chris Noessel Based on his work on his website Sci-Fi Interfaces, he wrote a really great book on UI design and scifi! Get the thing iTunes | Amazon   Show Notes How we wound up covering this teen romance Chris was in town and at the last minute, we called together a decipherSciFi meetup! Thanks for coming out, folks! Settling Mars Long and short term threats to humanity. Anthropocene.  Courage and adventure and inspiration. Astronaut Quarantine Frank Borman and space vomit and space diarrhea. Pre-flight and post-flight quarantine protocols. Mars mission design Rocket to orbit, dock with the larger ship/station, then on to Mars. Not entirely dissimilar to irl concepts. Finding energy on other bodies in space with lesser gravity wells. Public and private space industry partnership. Timelines and propulsion Around nine months to mars (maybe). Ion drives? Mundane solid rocket? Apparent weightlessness? Robots Remote Agent architecture. Robots prefabricating a Mars base before the humans arrive. Weightlessness Weightlessness as an environmental “stressor.” Insemination in space. Fetal and childhood physical development. Video Chat Light speed communication speed limitations. Using AI to simulate realtime conversation. Translucent screens! 

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure What: Bill Preston and Ted Logan are two totally excellent dudes facing one most heinous history exam. Directed by: Stephen Herek Starring: Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, George Carlin Featuring guest co-host Brandon Rollins, creator of War Co. Expandable Card Game Recommended and Related Media War Co Expandable Game Brandon’s really fun combat card game. You may have seen it here before the successful Kickstarter, but now it’s available on sale to all! Get the thing WarCoTheGame Wrath of the Khans by Dan Carlin The full arc of the great Mongol empire in Asia, as told by Dan Carlin. Get the thing Hardcore History Doctor Who Explains the Bootstrap Paradox Show Notes Mismatching of Person and Myth Flawed characters in history. Remembering to recognize that the characters we imagine may not be as close as we think to the real thing. Napoleon A short dead dude, but also irl an imposing figure. And not actually short! Of totally average height – the shortness thing was actually an ex post facto error in conversion from the units of measurement of his time and place. Socrates Socrates -> Plato -> Aristotle. The Hemlock treatment vs living in the future. Socratic ignorance: “the only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.” Bill and Ted’s rolled high on wisdom, low on intelligence.

I was a guest on our friend Liam‘s show! And here it is. We talked about the movie Hidden figures. So if you haven’t heard his show, please give this a listen and then subscribe to his show at Voice From L5 for new and interesting takes on humanity in space.

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon Independence Day: Resurgence What: Aliens return to Earth for revenge and to tap our milky center. Like Independence Day, but resurgent. Directed by: Roland Emmerich Starring: Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Brent Spiner, Jessie T. Usher Recommended and Related Media Why Earth Is A Prison and How To Escape It by Kurtzgesagt   Show Notes Alien Reconnaissance Distress calls. Radio broadcasts and other ways to watch the best.speech.ever. Alien Arrival Wormholes. Telefragging. In-system ship speeds and an incredible ability to slow down. Human Reverse Engineering Twenty years of reverse engineering alien tech has yielded great fruit. Propulsion! Anti-gravity. Getting Stuff in Space It’s hard! Gravity wells. Magic fusion antigravity obviates the main utility of Lagrange points. Inertial Dampening Fluid sack inertial dampening.Breathable oxygenated fluids. Vectors! Data in a Coma Muscular atrophy. Twenty years without moving. Communicating with locked-in patients. City Destroyers Gratiuitous city destruction. Tactics and strategy. Are the aliens just jerks? They flew into my butthole! My only weakness, how did you know?! Harvester Ships Why do cities lift off of the ground? Earth is just a ball of rock. And metal. The creamy center is actually not creamy but rather solid iron. It’s like a Kinder Egg and a Cadbury Cream Egg had a baby. The sorts of doom we’d face by having our core disrupted/extracted. Magnetosphere and the molten core. The crust ranges from 3-25 miles thick, fwiw.   Drilling the Core Massive energy to not only drill but keep the hole into the earth open. A hole in the bottom of the sea. ‘Baitin Jeff Goldblum is the master baiter. Alien queen fight. Insectoid queen morphology. Sexual dimorphism. Putting stuff up their butts for victory. Original idea, original idea, original idea: Final Answer 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 Edge of Tomorrow (Live. Die. Repeat.) What: Fifty First Dates with aliens (alt: Groundhog Day with aliens). Tom Cruise finds himself in a time loop. Directed by: Doug Liman Starring: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton, Brendan Gleeson Recommended and Related Media One-Minute Time Machine So charming! From the Youtube description: “Every time the beautiful Regina rejects his advances, James pushes a red button and tries again, all the while unaware of the reality and consequences of his actions.” Groundhog Day It’s like this movie, but with Bill Murray instead of Tom Cruise. And Stephen Tobolowsky instead of aliens. Also there is a time loop. Get the thing iTunes | Amazon Show Notes Names and Names and Names The light novel (All You Need is Kill) -> the movie (Edge of Tomorrow) -> the marketing (Live. Die. Repeat.) Tom Cruise in a Video Game Save points. Back in my day. Old-school save system where you have to go back to the beginning every time. Biological Von Neumann Probes The possibility of the cosmos awash in aggressive noodly alien murder machines. What are the odds they’d wind up at our doorstep? Mimic Morphology Spaghetti Monster tumbleweeds! Bioluminescence. Alienness. Hybrid creatures. Hierarchy. Starcraft Zerg rush! Starcraft was almost Warhammer. Exoskeletons! Reminds us of Elysium! Exosuit interfaces. Neural interface versus gestural. Safety mechanisms. Time Loop Superpowers What are thresholds of alpha blood exposure to contract timeloopism? Best method: bathing? in the butt? in the mouth? All of the above? Will the effect ever “run out?” Blood-bathing, Sookie Stackhouse style. Time Loops! Control of time loops. Like a garage door opener? TV remote? Is it time travel? Many-worlds interpretation. Branching timelines! Terminator meatballs. Who Wants to Live Forever, Sorta? Chris does. Whatever it takes! 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 WarGames What: Young Matthew Broderick accidentally almost hacks the planet. Directed by: John Badham Starring: Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, John Wood Featuring guest co-host Joe Ruppel, history nerd and our co-bff Recommended and Related Media Hardcore History 59 – The Destroyer of Worlds A light edition of Dan Carlin’s wonderful history podcast – only six hours! Get the thing Hardcore History Silicon Cowboys The documentary our guest recommended on the story of the personal computer from the Compaq point of view. Appropos for early 80s computing goodness. Stream it iTunes | Amazon Show Notes Cold War The 50s, the 60s, and the 80s and the climate at the time of the film. Star Wars (but not that Star Wars). Weapons to End War Gatling and the Gatling Gun, Alfred Nobel and dynamite, Tesla and his particle beams, and…. nuclear weapons? Early-80s Computing Hardware Text-To-Speech. Voder at the 1939 World’s Fair. Matthew Broderick’s computer. WarGames computer graphics and rendering radar screens. Machine Learning Teaching computers to teach themselves. The point where this movie steps into scifi territory. Dinosaurs Dinosaur extinction hypotheses at the time of the film. Falken is a psychopath. Goodbyes The only winning move is not to play. 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 show: Netflix Black Mirror Season 3, Part 2 (feat. Liam Ginty) What: Like the Twilight Zone, but scifi. Created by: Charlie Brooker Starring: Mackenzie Davis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Malachi Kirby, Kelly MacDonald Featuring guest co-host Liam Ginty, host of Voices From L5 Episodes 4-6 San Junipero, Men Against Fire, Hated in the Nation Show Notes San Junipero Happy endings. Consciousness uploading. Children of the 80s, idealistic recollections and the English lens. Continuity of self. Crippling fear of death. Men Against Fire How we get people to do things for us and how technology can make that even more terrible. Hacking visual input. Creepy Watson sex dreams. Hated in the Nation Covered in beeeeeees. Drone swarms. Social media hate. Goodbyes Don’t get a bee in the (r)ear! 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!

The Expanse VFX w/ Cailin Munroe : decipherSciFi is People 01 Stream The Expanse: iTunes | Netflix (Outside US) | Amazon An Interview: The Expanse VFX What: We talk to Cailin Munroe, VFX Producer on The Expanse, about how they so thoroughly flesh out the visual world of the show. An interview with Cailin Munroe, VFX Producer on The Expanse Show Notes We did an interview! Since it’s not the normal format, we’re releasing this as a bonus halfway between normal episodes. And we took Peter Van Loon’s suggestion for alternate naming! We talk here with Cailin Munroe from The Expanse all about a bunch of stuff: the role of the producer, on-set work, diaper butts, ship designs, physics FX, device and environment UI, space hair, dogs barking, matte paintings, 3D animated sets, the next form of the blue goo ☠️ 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 Ender’s Game What: Chosen-one kid trains to lead humanity’s forces against insectoid aliens. Directed by: Gavin Hood Starring: Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld Recommended and Related Media Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card The classic book on which the film is based. Read it with your eyes iTunes | Amazon Read it with your ears iTunes | Amazon Starship Troopers (feat. Joe Ruppel, History Nerd) : DecipherSciFi Episode 6 We covered another, kinda much better, movie about humans fighting insectoid aliens. “Click here to learn more!” Listen to the episode DecipherSciFi Show Notes Alien attacks Alien attacks and death tolls. Independence Day and flying planes up the butt. Water in spaaaaaaace Liquid water and the Goldilocks Zone. Frozen water all over the galaxy. Water vapor too! Dying Planets Schiaparelli, Percival  Lowell and the Martian “canals.” Insectoid Aliens Anatomy surprisingly like that of our tiny earth-based insects. Tool use? Telepathy? Queens controlling drones, but directly, apparently. Alien Communication Distance and lightspeed considerations in trying to communicate with aliens who may pose an existential threat to humanity. Deciphering Speeds and Distances 28 days. Distances to other stars. Space Combat Command Action per minute. Starcraft and command delegation. Doomsday Weapons Very very expensive weapons and the meaning of a dollar. Goodbyes Colonel Graff: We won! That’s all that matters. Ender Wiggin: No. The *way* we win matters. 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 show: Netflix Black Mirror Season 3, Part 1 (feat. Liam Ginty) What: Like the Twilight Zone, but scifi. Created by: Charlie Brooker Starring: Bryce Dallas Howard, Kelly Macdonald, Wyatt Russell, Jerome Flynn, Alex Lawther Featuring guest co-host Liam Ginty, host of Voices From L5   Episodes 1-3 Nosedive, Playtest, and Shut Up and Dance Show Notes Nosedive Slow motion train wreck.  Meow-meow beans. Chinese social credit system. Real life is this episode. Nuance and charity in judging other people. Playtest Backpacking fantasy. Christopher’s beard jealousy. Working while traveling via the internet. Hideo Kojima. Near-death experiences, dream experiences, and neurological speed. Death spike hallucinations. American Psycho Hideo Kojima. Shut Up and Dance Integrity. Liam’s butt. The worst of the worst. Anonymous.   Goodbyes Bye! 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 Passengers What: Two really pretty people get to know each other in spaaaaaaace. Directed by: Morten Tyldum Starring: Christopher Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Lawrence Fishburne Featuring guest co-host Adrian Falcone, general-purpose internet nerd Recommended and Related Media Seveneves Hard scifi about surviving in spaaaace! Related somewhat to some of the physics stuff we talked about on this episode. Really, we just want to find more opportunities to talk about Seveneves.

Stream the movie: iTunes | Amazon Labyrinth What: Jennifer Connelly has to solve a magical labyrinth in thirteen hours to save her baby brother from the Goblin King. Directed by: Jim Henson Starring: David Bowie, Jennifer Connelly, Puppets Featuring guest co-hosts Meredith Conti & Jillian Berke Recommended and Related Media The Dark Crystal Jim Henson’s elaborate puppet-based fantasy which preceded labyrinth. Get the thing iTunes | Amazon Brian Fraud’s Art Books Did you dig the art direction in Labyrinth? The dude behind it made a few books of his art. One of them is a book of goblin art directly from the film! They are neat. Good Faeries/Bad Faeries Amazon The Goblins of Labyrinth Amazon Show Notes Labyrinth production The Dark Crystal -> Labyrinth -> Mirrormask : a spiritual trilogy. Jim Henson. Beverly Crusher’s choreography. Fantasy Rules and Dream Worlds Our difficulty with fantasy again, and further difficulty specific to dreamland stories. Nothing makes sense, cause and effect cannot be counted on, and essentially nothing is on the line. Yet Labyrinth is still delightful (because nostalgia!). Relating to adolescents Identifying with adults now more, since we are adults. Dreams Dreaming. Animal models. Rats and humans and dreaming during non-REM sleep. The Greek Myth of the Labyrinth Minotaur, reverse-minotaur. Plus, a succinct and accurate retelling of the story. Maze-solving and cognition Humans are okay. Rats are okay. Dogs, not so much. “Ecocentric cognitive mapping.” FMRI and navigation in virtual reality. The bog of eternal stench Irreparable putrescence. Not something that is on you, but something that infuses your very flesh to continue to be stinky. Or, magic. Goodbyes You have no power over me! 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!