The Science in The Fiction

This is the second half of Marty's conversation about paleontology with science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer and paleo-artist Julius Csotonyi.  They discuss their lives and careers as people with one foot in science and the other in arts, and the value of art to science.  They also talk about speculative evolution and how the science of paleontology can inform exobiology - understanding how life evolved in in the deep past on Earth may teach us lessons about what life could be like in different environments on other planets. 
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Science fiction author and icon Robert J. Sawyer speaks with renowned paleo-artist Julius Csotonyi about their shared love of all things paleontological.  They discuss Rob’s ‘Quintaglio Ascension’, a trilogy about a species of Nanotyrannus given the time and space to evolve intelligence and their own civilization outside our solar system.  They tell us about some of the latest scientific developments in our changing view of dinosaurs, discussing whether and which dinos were warm- vs cold-blooded, avian and non-avian therapods, Opavinea, and the rise of new techniques that have allowed us to detect the colour of these ancient animals.  They also talk about the state of science, politics and public education in facing the existential threats of our time, and what we owe to future generations.
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Robert J. Sawyer returns to the show to discuss 'The Quintaglio Ascension', a trilogy composed of ‘Far-Seer’, ‘Fossil Hunter’ and ‘Foreigner’.  We talk about his early writing in the 90’s, which indulged his love and passion for paleontology. This trilogy recapitulates the history of science with the stories of Galileo, Darwin and Freud.  Each of these figures delivered blows to the narcissistic ego, which lends high stakes to a thought experiment about how different species may be well- or ill-suited to become intelligent and form a technological civilization - if dinosaurs were given the opportunity to evolve longer.  We talk about the received wisdom that a cometary impact was the primary cause of the dinosaur extinction - which may not be as accurate as we once thought!  We discuss changes in our understanding of Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus. Rob tells us about Dale Russell and his hypothetical Humanoid Dinosauroids, based on Troodon. Rob makes paleontology into a playground for speculative exobiology.
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This is the second half of our conversation with Micaiah Johnson continued from our last episode about necropolitics in Ned Beauman's 'Venomous Lumpsucker'.  Micaiah is the author of the Ashtown duology, ‘The Space Between Worlds’ and ‘Those Beyond the Wall’, and we spoke to her about these books in episode 49, loosely on the topic of the Multiverse but more about the social and political aspects of a future dystopia divided by extreme inequality.  Since that interview Micaiah has become Dr. Johnson, completing her PhD on those very subjects, and in this episode we focus on her PhD which is titled ‘The Unkilled: White Supremacy's Insidious Preservation of Black Lives'.  Here we delve more deeply into social and political science to understand something about the dark underbelly of inequality, violence, and frankly evil which has permeated the foundations of our civilization, and continues to do so in a shockingly relevant moment as we see the eruption of American fascism today. This is a pretty intense conversation addressing some heavy topics, but Micaiah does so with the kind of bright passionate intelligence that it takes to sustain a long fight against the darkness. 
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We welcome Micaiah Johnson back to the show, this time in her role as a PhD specialist on the topic of Necropolitics, which we tackled in our last episode on 'Venomous Lumpsucker' by Ned Beauman.  This episode is the first half of our conversation, where Micaiah introduces us to the topic of Necropolitics and its origins from Foucault to Mbembe.  She discusses how it pertains to Ned's book in terms of harmful practices of 'preservation' gone awry. We also talk about the tyranny of billionaires, Zohran Mamdani's win in New York, joyful hopelessness and the difference between doing good and being seen to do good. The second half of our conversation will continue in our next episode where we take a deep dive into Micaiah's PhD thesis 'The Unkilled: White Supremacy's Insidious Preservation of Black Lives'.
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