Escape Pod 953: Sturdy Ladders and Lanterns

Escape Pod

Escape Artists Foundation

Fiction, Science Fiction, Drama

4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2024

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sturdy Ladders and Lanterns By Malka Older As a freelance marine behavioral researcher most of Natalia’s jobs went something like this: She swam around in some large but controllable environment with a cephalopod, paying attention to its body language and her own. She tried to make the octopus or squid feel as comfortable as possible, so that its behavior in response to stimuli might approximate what it would do in the wild. It wasn’t what she had expected when she trained as a marine biologist, but frankly she preferred it to dissection, experimentation by electric shock, or even anything that required interacting with animals captive in tiny tanks. This particular job started out only slightly unusual. For most jobs she was given a specific research interest. Sometimes they told her exactly what to do to elicit the behaviors they wanted to study, and sometimes they let her design the approach, but either way it meant some narrow focus for her attention. Natalia always tried to give the cephalopod some play time around their interactions – if challenged on this, she told her employers that it led to more natural responses than repeating the same cues over and over again – but their time was very much directed by research. On this job, they told her just to play with the octopus.

Transcript

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0:00.0	EA is now on Twitch.
0:03.0	Join us Wednesday nights when Alister reads a bedtime story
0:06.8	and Sunday mornings for a few hours of chill casual gaming,
0:10.6	plus interviews, special guests, pick up streams, and more.
0:14.7	Visit twitch. TV slash EA Podcasts, and follow us to be notified when we go live,
0:21.6	plus access VODs of past broadcasts. Escape Bod, episode 953.
0:37.0	Steady Laders and Lantons.
0:42.0	By Malco older. Oh, Welcome to a skate pod, the weekly science fiction podcast. I'm Alistair, your host and this week's audio production is by The Mighty Adam Pract, and this
1:15.6	week's story is Studi Ladison Lantons by Malka Alda.
1:19.4	Malka Alda is a nerd with narrative disorder, humanitarian and socio-punk who practices evidence-based
1:25.4	creativity and speculative resistance. She's the author of the sci-fi political thriller Infamocracy
1:30.7	and its sequels and a series of murder mysteries set on Jupiter
1:33.9	beginning with the mimicking of known successes which is fantastic as well as
1:38.3	many other short stories essays and poems. Your narrator this week is our own Valerie Valdez.
1:44.4	Valerie is co-editor of the award-winning Escape Science Fiction podcast.
1:48.1	Her debut novel, Chilling Effect, was shortlisted for the an uncanny magazine fit for the gods magic of the gathering and several
2:03.6	anthologies she lives in Georgia with her husband children and cat your
2:08.0	audio production wizard is Adam Pract your man in the chair is me, so take a deep breath.
2:14.0	Get ready to dive.
2:16.0	It's story time. Sturdy ladders and lanterns by Malcolm Older.
2:32.0	As a freelance marine behavioral researcher, most of Natalia's jobs went something like this.
2:37.0	She swam around in some large but controllable environment with a cephalopod, paying attention to its body language and her own.
	...

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