Science Faction Podcast

Devon shared his thoughts on Red One, a Christmas action movie involving a military operation to save Santa, describing it as "a slog and not clever," though his kid loved Home Alone. Steven wrapped up holiday cleanup and started reading Future Noir, a deep dive into the making of Blade Runner. He also reflected on the differences between narration in Blade Runner and Dark City. Ben has been dealing with his son's walking pneumonia and spent time playing Inertial Drift (check out the free prologue). On the music side, he enjoyed 311's cover of The Offspring and The Offspring's cover of 311.

• Note this: Exploring the Obsidian Digital Garden Plugin, a tool to publish notes from Obsidian directly online. Supports static site generation and free hosting on Vercel or Netlify. Obsidian Digital Garden Docs | Ben's Demo
• All Around the Globe: Discussed Flat-Earthers' humbling experience in Antarctica while attempting to prove their theories. Article: Flat-Earthers Travel to Antarctica
• Nevermind That Noise You Heard: Highlighted research on the link between poor sleep and mental health issues due to brain deficits that block unwanted thoughts. Related to themes from Reminiscence. Science Daily Article Reminiscence IMDB link

• Next Week: The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin Read Online
• This Week: Arthur C. Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God Read Online | Audiobook on YouTube Discussion on its themes appearing in works like Three-Body Problem, Spin, and Blindsight.
• Steven and Devon brainstorm the logistics of a Futurama-style "smell-o-scope," inspired by Godfellas. Futurama Wiki: Godfellas
• Devon: Talked about philosopher Philipp Mainländer and his fascinating, existential ideas. Wikipedia: Philipp Mainländer

Devon shared highlights from their recent trip to Oregon, where they visited the coast, skipped skiing, and explored a lighthouse. The visit to Tillamook stood out, especially encountering a hilariously judgy giant cow head. Check out Tillamook here.

Steven went on a major upgrade spree, adding a new desk chair, soundboard, and computer to their setup. They also delved into tabletop RPGs, including Perils & Princesses (official site), The Princess in Black (learn more), and Slugblaster, with its iconic quantum centipede kickflips.

Ben talked about navigating a family challenge with their kid's walking pneumonia, which led to a movie marathon featuring The Martian and Sandlot. They're also looking forward to the upcoming adaptation of Project Hail Mary (movie details). On the gaming side, they played Void Crew.

The team also reflected on the Lower Decks season finale, discussing intentionality in media consumption, and debated the myth of multitasking. More about Lower Decks here.

Ben reviewed the film Hidden Figures, celebrating the incredible achievements of NASA's "human computers" while highlighting anachronisms like gum-chewing in the 1960s. Read more about the film.

Devon recapped the year's biggest science stories, from a total solar eclipse to Europa mission updates and record-breaking heat. Other highlights included mapping the fruit fly brain, Icelandic eruptions, and bird flu concerns. Full list of 2024's top science stories.

Steven explored a groundbreaking AI-based therapeutic platform that mimics virus structures to develop innovative treatments. Learn more here.

This week, the team discussed Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder, diving into its themes of time travel, the butterfly effect, and unintended consequences. Read the story here.

Next week, they'll tackle Arthur C. Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God, a fascinating tale blending religion and technology. The story follows two programmers hired by Buddhist monks to list all possible names of God—a task that might just end the universe. Read it here.

Steven shares his recent battle with the flu, updates to his computer and recording setup, and his deep dive into World's Finest from the Superman: The Animated Series. He's also been watching That Christmas on Netflix, a cozy seasonal pick. Meanwhile, Ben recounts his creative ventures, like shadow boxing the Moon Lord, experimenting with black paper and sharpies, and recommends Perfect Days. This Tokyo-based film follows the quiet, reflective life of Hirayama, a janitor whose mundane routines uncover profound beauty. With its oldies-filled cassette soundtrack, the film is perfect for anyone craving a refreshed outlook on life's simple joys. Perfect Days on IMDb.

This Week in Space: In space exploration news, NASA's Parker Solar Probe is making history this week by flying closer to the Sun than ever before—just 3.8 million miles from its surface. It's the fastest human-made object, designed to brave temperatures over 2,500°F as it ventures into the Sun's corona to unlock mysteries about the solar wind.

That's Nuts!: Meanwhile, on Earth, scientists have observed California ground squirrels defying their herbivorous stereotype by hunting and eating voles. This unexpected carnivorous behavior highlights their adaptability and raises new questions about the flexibility of animal diets in response to environmental changes. Read more about this discovery in the ScienceDaily article and watch a detailed breakdown on YouTube.

This week, we dive into spoiler-heavy discussion for the short film Where Rabbits Come From, a moving tale set in a dystopian world. Ben reviews the story of a widowed father rabbit who defies an authoritarian government to spark hope and magic in his daughter's life. They escape oppression, finding solace and a possible reunion in the meadow. Learn more on Letterboxd.

On a lighter note, Steven gives a glowing review of Skeleton Crew, a family-friendly Star Wars show featuring kid pirates and Shistavanen aliens, which ties back to some classic lore. Check out Shistavanen lore here.

Next week, we'll explore Ray Bradbury's time-travel classic, A Sound of Thunder. Read the story here or listen to an audio reading on YouTube. For a fun twist, watch this TV show adaptation.

Real Life:

Steven is sick or dead, we don't remember, so Ben and Devon take over the show. Devon is traveling for the holidays so needs to bill as much as possible at work. Devon explains what it's like to be an independent contractor. Ben's work is a little less reliable. Snoop Dogg records a holiday message for Ben's parent, parent, parent company. Snoop Dogg is somehow still as famous as ever.

Future or Now:

This Week in Space

Astrophysicists capture astonishing images of gamma-ray flare from supermassive black hole M87. The jet is tens of millions of times larger than the black hole's event horizon. The galaxy M87, located in the Virgo constellation, provided the first-ever photo of a black hole in 2019, when the Event Horizon Telescope captured an image of the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. An international research team has now observed a teraelectronvolt gamma-ray flare seven orders of magnitude -- tens of millions of times -- larger than the event horizon, or surface of the black hole itself. A flare of this intensity -- which has not been observed in over a decade -- can offer crucial insights into how particles, such as electrons and positrons, are accelerated in the extreme environments near black holes.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241213140634.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_87

Black holes and why they look like that: https://youtu.be/zUyH3XhpLTo?si=7drAgoVloX9hytmo

New Technology Could Keep Communications Going During Disasters

RNZ (12/6) News from New Zealand: "The 'mesh node' is a small black walkie-talkie sized box that connects to a cellphone through Bluetooth. It then connects to a network of solar powered nodes across the region, which allows users to send short text messages, even when all other communications are down. It has been tailor-made by Tai Rāwhiti Civil Defence, and emergency manager Ben Green said it is "a cost-effective solution for reliable communications in a disaster."

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/535819/new-technology-could-keep-communications-going-during-disasters

Book Club:

Next week book club: WHERE RABBITS COME FROM, a French animated short film that's being shopped around for awards this season. The answer will surprise you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH_TgDEuCfI&ab_channel=StudioNiloc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAkqGMU-mug&list=PLwDe6hrCodhk0k3qCN0QTqixXu6g2R5Nh&index=6

Lower Decks The 947th episode of Star Trek was the penultimate episode of Lower Decks. This episodes has awesome cameos and did multiverse right. Devon still likes the show but doesn't feel it's actually Star Trek canon. We wish Loer Decks had gone for seven seasons. There's plans for more comedic Star Trek in the future. Will it be as good as Lower Decks?

More Star Trek News

The Section 31 movie is coming in January. Ben is looking forward to it, Devon has no plans to watch it. Ben is excited by the secondary cast of the movie. Are there Xindi in the movie? The movie is set in the "Lost Era".

This episode contains: Ben welcomes a special guest host: Flint Lawless. Steven and Devon are off dealing with family illness and work commitments, so you know what that means! Well, we don't actually talk about video games at all this one (I know, right?).

Future or Now:

The Magic Eye: Remember autostereograms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostereogram)? Stereograms are 2D images that create the illusion of a 3D scene by exploiting the way our eyes perceive depth. "Magic Eye" images are a popular form of autostereogram. Learn how to see Magic Eye images here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdWNYdk-vWY.

As a kid, Ben would spend hours looking at Magic Eye books, and it felt like magic because most everybody else didn't see them. He was like a wizard. Recently, he came across an article about using Excel of all things to create Magic Eye images (https://divisbyzero.com/2024/11/30/make-a-magic-eye-image-using-excel/) but guess who has two thumbs and doesn't have Excel? This guy! Turns out there's an easy to use free online tool for making autostereograms (https://www.easystereogrambuilder.com/). He also found a music video that was a moving stereogram (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AKtp3XHn38). Flint was curious, but completely perplexed because he doesn't know how to see them yet.

"Book Club":

Next week: WHERE RABBITS COME FROM, a French animated short film that's being shopped around for awards this season. The answer will surprise you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAkqGMU-mug&list=PLwDe6hrCodhk0k3qCN0QTqixXu6g2R5Nh&index=6

This week: No time for book club: the first two episodes of the new Star Wars show Skeleton Crew is out. It's good! And we start comparing it to Farscape, Star Trek: Prodigy and One Piece. It's a sweet Goonies-like mystery. The Republic likes to hide planets for some reason… maybe they're not exactly the good guys? Flint and Ben discuss the morally gray areas of stories where the "forces of good" make questionable decisions that lead to positive and negative consequences.

This episode contains: We three hosts gobbled up Thanksgiving, celebrating with families, parents and in-laws. Why did Ford call their electric car a Mach-E? Or is it Maquis? A Mockery? Ben gives a slightly different (and more positive) take on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice than Devon's review from a couple months ago (https://sciencefactionpodcast.com/2024/09/11/episode-522-incomprehensibly-gravelly/). The first half hour is definitely rough but it comes together, in the back half especially. Big shout-out to the production design of the afterlife and the cameos. Devon's a pickleball-player now, and we contrast it with racquetball. Steven and his family saw Moana 2 and opinions varied wildly among the family. Don't expect a Lin Manuel Miranda soundtrack, but do expect them to set up a bunch of sequels.

Future or Now:

Right now, in the 1960s: Ben's ready to spoil The Twilight Zone episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." On a peaceful suburban street, strange occurrences and mysterious people stoke the residents' paranoia to a disastrous intensity. This is nearly REQUIRED VIEWING for anyone on the internet these days. "The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone." Despite this being a story very inspired by McCarthyism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism), our current paranoia about our neighbors needs to stop.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734664/

Three things to ponder ("Eat the 1%"): Devon wonders why don't we eat turkey eggs? It's all about the downsides: even though they're not hazardous, turkeys have slower egg production, larger size and space requirements, and tougher egg shells than chickens. Why will some pets (especially dogs) eat their dead owners, even when there's food available? The current hypothesis is that the dogs are trying to frantically wake up their owners, and after biting the face, their instinct takes over. Also, the Higgs particle only accounts for 1% of the mass of an object.

https://www.iflscience.com/turkey-eggs-why-dont-we-eat-them-77017

Get over here! (Don't "TOASTY" me): Steven brings us this morsel of news: a tiny, four-fingered 'hand' folded from a single piece of DNA can pick up the virus that causes COVID-19 for highly sensitive rapid detection and can even block viral particles from entering cells to infect them, researchers report. Dubbed the NanoGripper, the nanorobotic hand also could be programmed to interact with other viruses or to recognize cell surface markers for targeted drug delivery, such as for cancer treatment.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/11/241127165721.htm

"Book Club"

This week: Big Oxygen by exurb1a

A janitor on a spaceship wakes up from an emergency alarm to complete bedlam. Every group he runs across has a different ideology, in fact, their baseline ideologies have been erased, and it doesn't go well for anyone. Turns out belief without facts and reason will destroy, but also just getting facts without context is disastrous. It's about how you digest facts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKouPOhh_9I

Also, ChatGPT cheats against Stockfish in Chess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSCNW1OCk_M

Next week: WHERE RABBITS COME FROM, a French animated short film that's being shopped around for awards this season. The answer will surprise you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAkqGMU-mug&list=PLwDe6hrCodhk0k3qCN0QTqixXu6g2R5Nh&index=6

REAL LIFE

Devon is dealing with a sick family and Ben is wiped, despite finally having a chance to rest. Ben has been covering for his boss and teaching a beginning HTML class to kids. Most of the kids are awesome but some are "chaos gremlins." Ben also just drove to Burback and back for a roller derby tournament. Ben had to be the father to 15 kids. Ben's wife had to stay home for work and to take care of a geriatric cat. For Steven this was conference week so his kids got off school early. He forced them to play outside with the extra time. Steven's kids have been "bruh-ing." Steven has jumped back into Caves and Qud. (https://www.cavesofqud.com/). It's a fantastic, weird, fun game. Steven is reading Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, which is… interesting. Steven also built a Lego Nano Gauntlet.

FUTURE OR NOW

First up, Mothership RPG (check it out here), the award-winning sci-fi horror game where surviving outer space is just the beginning. With streamlined character creation and easy session prep, it's perfect for both new and experienced players. Steven's even offering to run a game for our listeners—join our Discord if you're in! Next, Ben explores a breakthrough in carbon capture with UC Berkeley's COF-999 powder, which removes CO2 from the air at record rates and promises a more energy-efficient future. Read about it here. Lastly, Devon dives into panpsychism, the philosophical idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe. Hear his take, complete with debates from thinkers like Sean Carroll and Philip Goff. Want to learn more? Check out the Wikipedia entry or this intriguing Mind Chat video.

BOOK CLUB

Renee has been watching Prodigy. We mention needing to discuss the new episodes of Lower Decks and the short film Unification.

The High Test by Fredrik Pohl (1983)

Originally published in Asimov Science Fiction Magazine. A story of a man working as a driving instructor on a distant planet. He's actually a flight instructor teaching humans and aliens how to fly their spaceships. A cozy slice of life according to Ben. According to Devon the story felt like a product of the 50s despite being written in the 80s. Was the inspiration for this story: what if an alien needed to pass a driving test before attempting to destroy humans?

Next Week

Big Oxygen by exurb1a

Devon shared about their recent visit to Fredericksburg, aka "Texas wine country," where the German settlers brought their food and flair. While there were tempting wine tastings, Devon was not about to wait 30 minutes for a sip. Oh, and they're currently battling a cold, which sounded something like SNNNOOORRRRTTT. Meanwhile, Steven recapped an out-of-town trip that included a stop at Black Diamond Games in Concord, CA, where he picked up the RPG Mothership and The Electric State. On the D&D front, Steven is on the hunt for elf druid miniatures for his daughter's character. Ben, on the other hand, discovered Walkabout Mini Golf on iOS, which offers touch-to-putt and AR modes—sounds like a hole-in-one! He also dove into the world of Star Trek fan edits, sharing a link to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 0. However, Ben admitted to only watching Voyager once (FOR SHAME!), while his son has decided Worf is the best (double shame!). Devon, ever resourceful, uses Star Trek as a threat to keep his kids in line.

Ben stumbled into the world of web design and shared the new CSS logo—designed with a squircle, of all things. The logo's hex color, #663399, is known as "Rebecca Purple" and has a meaningful backstory. Devon switched gears to science, geeking out about tardigrades (a.k.a. water bears), which are radiation-resistant extremophiles with 15,000 known species. These tiny creatures can repair their DNA after radiation damage and even borrow genes through horizontal gene transfer. Talk about resilient! For more details, check out this article. For some sci-fi vibes, we also pondered if the Netflix show Away about going to Mars might scratch your space-loving itch. Steven wrapped up this section with a discussion on the psychology of money. A recent study from ScienceDaily suggests that digital money doesn't create the same emotional connection as physical cash. Devon thinks of cash as "free money," while Steven questions if digital currency even feels real.

This week, we read Ray Bradbury's The Crowd, a story rich with layers of meaning. It sparked discussions about collectivism vs. individuality, Red Scare-era anti-communism, and a lingering mystery: are they aliens, ghosts, or demons? Regardless of the interpretation, we thoroughly enjoyed this one! For next week, we're diving into Frederik Pohl's short story The High Test. You can check it out here.

This episode contains: Steven and Ben are handling post-election nerves and how to channel that energy productively. Ben's been comforted by watching New York City newscasts from 1981, which you can find on YouTube. How refreshing it is to see a newscast that's not supposed to be entertainment! Steven's been focusing on family time and getting to know his nephew. Ben binged the first four episodes of WondLa. Check out the official trailer and see how it's tracking on Rotten Tomatoes. Steven is picking up some serious I Am Mother vibes from that WondLa trailer. RIP Star Trek guest star (and Candyman himself) Tony Todd, a legend gone too soon. Remember Star Trek: Lower Decks? The 943rd episode just aired (Season 5, Episode 4)! It's good! You should watch it! We chat about how the multiverses are going, specifically DC vs Marvel.

Future or Now

Are You Bready For This?: Steven presents a new study that discusses human's taste for carby bread and reveals how the duplication of the salivary amylase gene (AMY1) may have occurred over 800,000 years ago, long before agriculture. Wait, bread makes you fat? This gene duplication helped shape human adaptation to starchy foods and led to the wide genetic variation in AMY1 copy number that exists today, influencing how effectively humans digest starch.

Read more about this study on Science Daily.

Today is the greatest day I've ever known: Do you miss the social media of yore? The posts and videos that showed our humanity without the editing and gloss? Ben remembers it, and so does Ben Thompson, who wrote a blog post about the prevalence of IMG_#### videos on YouTube. These are relics from between 2009 and 2012 when iPhone and iPod Touch included a "Send to YouTube" feature that allowed users to upload videos directly to YouTube from the Photos app. Apple uses the 'IMG_XXXX' naming convention for all images and videos captured on iOS devices, where XXXX is a unique sequence number. Unwitting content creators would then upload their videos on a public site with a barely-searchable name. To this day, there are millions of these videos, and if you search YouTube for "IMG_" and then four random digits, you'll find some one-of-a-kind videos of random stranger's lives.

Read more and have a warm digital hug on ben-mini.github.io.

Book Club

Since Devon's not here, we're skipping book club this week. Next week, we'll be exploring Ray Bradbury's "The Crowd," a haunting look at strange crowd behaviors in urban life. Watch an audiobook of this story on YouTube.

This week, we get into the trailers for some upcoming big Marvel and Star Wars stuff:

• Captain America: Brave New World

• Thunderbolts

• Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and a special shoutout to the music featured in the trailer: a Huttese cover of "Major Tom (Coming Home)".

• Marvel Studios Disney+ D23 2024/25

Do you want to see YouTube more like a classic series of television stations? Check out YTCH.

This episode contains: Devon kicks things off with a Dr. Pepper Zero, or as we like to call it, "the creeping death." Just caffeine jokes—or maybe there's something deeper to his love for this soda! Steven, on the other hand, brings us a blast from the past with Department Zero, an RPG he created back in 2013. Imagine a Fantasy Men in Black vibe, complete with dragons, aliens, and magical conspiracies. This world has been brewing in Steven's mind for a decade, and it sounds like an adventure for the ages!

Ben poses a question for the tech-minded: how long should a computer last? Steven has a "Computer of Theseus" filled with endless upgrades, Devon shrugs off the question with work laptops and a trusty gaming rig, while Ben takes a "separation of concerns" approach, keeping two laptops—one for work and one for personal use. On top of that, Ben has a family tradition of passing down old tech. This leads us to a broader discussion about the best ways to keep our tech alive and kicking.

Ben also brings us High Stakes: Las Vegas 2024. Imagine a world where vampires have stolen your blood, and you're forced to win it back. Are you brave enough to play the card game of your life to recover what's yours? This high-stakes adventure invites you to consider just how far you'd go to get your blood back.

Wake Up, Sheeple! Let's Talk Science and Sci-Fi

In Devon's Space Report, we delve into a cosmic mystery that's puzzling scientists. A massive structure, dubbed "The Big Ring," sits 6.9 billion light-years away, defying what we thought we knew about the universe. The Big Ring spans an astounding 1.3 billion light-years and lies near another oddity, the Giant Arc. Ordinarily, Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) suggest that structures in space should appear uniform, yet these two anomalies suggest otherwise. Are we seeing evidence of multiple big bangs, the presence of cosmic strings, or could it all just be a cosmic coincidence? Read more about it here.

On a lighter note, Ben gives us his take on Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 5. Has Lower Decks finally hit its stride, or does Starfleet's most comedic ship need a new direction? Ben has thoughts, and fans of the show won't want to miss them.

Meanwhile, Steven shares a rapid-fire lineup of recent reads, including Red Rising, Annihilation, Fallen Dragon, and his thoughts on Agatha All Along's finale. His recommendations cover sci-fi, mystery, and thriller genres, perfect for anyone looking to dive into a new story.

This week, we dive into Isaac Asimov's "Nightfall," widely regarded as one of the greatest sci-fi stories of all time. Check it out on Goodreads. Written when Asimov was in his twenties, Nightfall tells the story of a planet that's continuously illuminated by six suns—until an eclipse plunges it into total darkness once every 2,049 years. When that darkness finally arrives, the population, who has never experienced nightfall, is thrown into chaos. The story explores themes of fear, the unknown, and societal breakdown, offering a compelling read that earned its status as a classic.

As a bonus, we recommend The End of Eternity, another must-read by Asimov. This novel tackles time travel with Asimov's signature twist and intricate plotting. More on Goodreads.

Next week, we'll be exploring Ray Bradbury's "The Crowd," a haunting look at strange crowd behaviors in urban life. Watch the adaptation here.