Fiction Science Podcast Transcripts
Alan Boyle · 79 episodes with transcripts
Cosmic Log's podcast from the place where science and technology intersect with science fiction and popular culture, hosted by science writer Alan Boyle and science-fiction writer Dominica Phetteplace. Become a supporter for less than (or more than) a dollar a month.
Spoken has transcripts of 79 Fiction Science episodes, with the speakers named. The newest listed here is from November 8, 2020.
Every Fiction Science transcript in one script
79 episodes of Fiction Science have transcripts. Fetch them all as speaker-labeled Markdown in one script — 1 credit each, and re-fetching one you already have is free:
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Latest Fiction Science transcripts
Sci-fi master Ted Chiang on AI, time travel and more
November 8, 2020
Ted Chiang (0:00)
What science fiction usually wants from AI, from these conscious machines, is actually not exactly a butler, but a slave. We want someone who is competent and obedient and to whom we owe nothing. We don't want someone who makes any demands on us.
We want a robot that you could treat like shit if you wanted.
Alan Boyle (0:23)
Is it right to treat our future robots as slaves? Celebrated author Ted Chiang tackles that question in his Science Fiction Stories and in this episode of the Fiction Science Podcast. Greetings, Earthlings. I'm Alan Boyle, the mastermind behind Cosmic Log and one of your hosts for the Fiction Science Podcast, coming…
That line, spoken by actress Amy Adams in the movie Arrival, encapsulates the kinds of questions that spark thought-provoking science fiction stories for Ted Chiang. One of his novellas, Story of Your Life, provided the inspiration for the 2016 film. In his most recent short story collection, Exhalation, Chiang…
Ted Chiang (4:03)
I don't know that I have an enormous amount of wisdom to share on what has been happening in 2020, because, yeah, it has been a crazy year, and it has been confounding for me as it has been for most everyone else, I think. As for the role of creativity, and I'll say that rather than talking specifically about the…
One question that I've seen come up is, does art have any role to play in times of crisis such as this?
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