A Different Kind of Ted (Chiang) Talk

Paul Giamatti’s CHINWAG with Stephen Asma

Treefort Media & Touchy Feely Films

Society & Culture, History, Science

4.9 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 December 2023

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

🦾🦾🦾 In this Chinwag, Paul and Stephen are thrilled to be subject to fascinating thought experiments by award-winning fiction writer Ted Chiang. Up for the discussion? The difference between fact and fiction when it comes to the existence of alien life, and whether Paul is indeed an assassin because he played one in an action film Ted once saw. Imaginations are running amok and people can’t differentiate between what’s real and what isn’t. Is social media to blame or was The National Enquirer the social media of yester-year? Online echo chambers and the dangerous speed of information may be a culprit for conspiracy theories. And is belief in aliens and monsters in pop culture a direct response to higher anxiety levels and an externalization of neuroses? Then, what is singularity and was it born with the invention of the wheel? Paul and Stephen are happy to learn that Ted’s not afraid that AI will take over, but the natural desire to do less work may lead to more romances between humans and AI robots. So buckle up and plug in your lady-cyborg and get ready for an all new fascinating Chinwag! Paul Giamatti is an award-winning actor and producer. Stephen Asma is a professor and author specializing in the philosophy of science, religion, and art. Ted Chiang is a fiction writer whose works have won him four Hugo, four Nebula, and four Locus awards. He has been featured in The Best American Short Stories and has authored two collections, Exhalation and Stories of Your Life and Others. The title story from Stories was adapted into the feature film Arrival. Chiang is also a frequent non-fiction contributor to the New Yorker Magazine, most recently on topics related to computer technology, and artificial intelligence. 🦾🦾🦾 ========= Vocab Chin-Word of the Week: OMPHALOS ========= New eps of CHINWAG drop Wednesdays for free... n(🧊) Make sure to follow us @chinwagpod 👉🏼 IG: https://www.instagram.com/chinwagpod/ Tik: https://www.tiktok.com/@chinwagpod Website: http://chinwagpod.fm YOUTUBE x CHINWAG Playlists ▶️ YT Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@chinwagpod Full episodes playlist: https://bit.ly/chinwagYT Animated shorts: https://bit.ly/chinwaganimations Send your stories, Qs, or thoughts to 📧 questions [at] chinwagpod [dot] fm Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello everybody it's Paul Giamotti speaking.
0:08.0	Stephen Asmas I live and breathe. How are you sir? I'm doing well.
0:11.3	Are you familiar with NPR's throughline podcast Steve?
0:15.1	Yeah, it's an excellent podcast and I've been listening to it for a while.
0:18.1	Yeah, you're a listener.
0:19.3	Yeah.
0:20.3	I love this show.
0:21.0	Every week they go back in time to understand the present because you can't fully understand the moment we're living in without knowing where we've been, right?
0:28.0	Very true. And on every episode of NPR's throughline, the host take a story from the news and go back to where it started.
0:34.7	They seek to answer one important question, how did we get here?
0:38.2	It's interesting stuff.
0:39.4	They have some amazing topics I think our audience will find intriguing.
0:42.4	There was a recent one about the scientist who tried to stop the aging process
0:46.4	because he deemed old age to be a disease that he could cure.
0:50.3	So it gets into all kinds of weird stuff.
0:52.6	Wow.
0:53.0	Eternal youth, our fear of aging, our fear of death,
0:55.6	it traces he feelings back thousands of years.
0:58.2	It's remarkable discussion.
0:59.7	So very cool stuff.
1:01.2	If you're interested in learning about how the past informs the present, you'll love the through-line podcast from NPR.
1:07.5	On NPR's throughline, the past is brought back to life and listeners get to go inside the stories from then that shape the world we live in now.
	...

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