Episode 139 – The Augmented’s Lament
00:00:00 – Daniel H. Wilson returns to talk to us about his new novel Amped, as well as his recently published Wall Street Journal op-ed about the future of human augmentation. Hear our first interview with Daniel where we discussed his first novel Robopocalypse in episode 95.
00:22:45 – Kelly has beer on the brain after trying the local craft offering: Good people coffee oatmeal stout. Charlie kicks back a Campari sprtiz and laments the loss of beetles in his beverage. And finally Ryan has an Old Engine Oil to commemorate our robotic guest.
00:26:00 – Trailer Trash Talk covers Seeking a Friend For the End of the World which forces them to think about the end and the existential questions imminent death presents, such as: Do we keep podcasting if we know an asteroid is about to destroy earth?
00:35:31 – Part 2 of our conversation with Daniel delves into the ethics of enhancement, plus there’s even sports talk, and we like sports.
00:56:55 – PaleoPOWs are a lot novels. They’re both new. Charlie starts off with a handsome donation from Rebecca W. Thanks, Rebecca! Ryan has a questioning comment from episode 136 left by Blaine B. And finally Kelly has a self-proclaimed enthusiastic iTunes review written by HerpetologyFTW!
Thanks for listening and be sure to check out the Brachiolope Media Network for more great science podcasts!
Music for this week’s show provided by:
Amped – Cypress Hill
Good People – Jack Johnson
You’ve Got A Friend In Me – Randy Newman
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger – Daft Punk
Image credit: Shorra
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There are 5 Comments to "Episode 139 – The Augmented’s Lament"
I’m listening to the podcast right now and I’m still in the middle of the Trailer trash talk part. I can not resist to share this (although it’s possibly a very annoying and not very helpful or amusing thing to share…).
I stopped the podcast to watch the trailer of “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” and… well, I have a thing for apocalyptic scenarios and more importantly – a thing for this exact scenario (‘no badass’, as one of you mentioned). And the best ever (in my book) and actually the best ever possible (also in my book) movie has already been created. It’s Don McKellar’s “Last Night” (1998). If you (or any of the other listeners) likes “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World”, you can give “Last night” a chance.
On completely unrelated notice – I like you guys very much, you make quite the show! Say hi to Kelly (and to Zach if he drops by again).
Keep on.
“Like it or not, podcasting only exists because iTunes allows it to.”
Ouch. This is the most I’ve ever disagreed with anything said on this show. I’ve discovered all of my podcasts through my own research, and I do all of my podcatching completely independent of any proprietary service.
Finding a podcast is as simple as running a search, and keeping up with it is as simple as subscribing to its RSS feed. Plenty of great pieces of FLOSS software for that. Also, it’s not that hard to just download most podcasts from the show website. What iTunes does is hardly irreplaceable.
Love the show, just wanted to chip in my token objection to this statement, as a card-carrying freetard.
“Stay free, stay open-source.”
While I applaud your efforts, I think you slightly missed what I was saying. You may have the know-how to handle your own podcatching, but I think many people struggle to even figure out how to get shows via the relatively friendly interface of iTunes.
Beyond that, over 75% of our downloads (and I’d wager that proportion is similar for most other podcasts) comes through iTunes. If iTunes suddenly said “No more podcasts” we’d likely lose most of our listenership and the show just wouldn’t be worth doing anymore. So that’s what I meant when I said that there but by the grace of iTunes go podcasting. Like it not, the giant aggregator makes shows viable even if you have another avenue for entry.
Regardless, thanks for putting in the effort to listen! You should write up a tutorial on homemade podcatching in case iTunes ever does kick us out.
Aw, heck, you know I can’t stay mad.
I agree that would make it one heck of a lot harder for people to find you for the first time if iTunes were ever to drop you (for whatever insane reason). I’d like to imagine, though, that the greater majority of your current fans would find a way to keep up and get our fix.
Anyway, the simple cross-platform podcatching solution for the iTunes-phobes out there is gPodder (http://gpodder.org/downloads). I assume it works as brilliantly for Windows and OS X as it does for Linux. Simple, lightweight, not particularly pretty, but it makes sure you get all your shows on time.
I found the conversation about augmented humans in the Olympics interesting and it brought to mind a story I recently listened to on Escape pod. The story is about a human who is competing an Olympics that only other non-augmented humans could compete in. They had separate Olympics because there were some many augmented humans that it didn’t seem fair to make “normal” humans compete against them.
It was an interesting story and here’s the link if you’re interested or have time to listen to it: http://escapepod.org/2011/11/10/ep318-the-prize-beyond-gold/
Your conversations with Daniel made me want to run out and grab his books. Looking forward to the next show.