Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur is a Youtube channel and podcast. The title is pretty self-explanatory. There are two things you'll notice right away. One, Isaac Arthur does have a speech impediment that makes him sound like Elmer Fudd. I don't like to bring it up but it will be the first thing you notice upon listening to him. Two, the futurism is coming from an actual physicist with a real sense of what's possible according to the laws of physics. I bring up that second point because I'm so used to encountering science fiction and futurism where the author/futurist clearly doesn't understand what avenues are opened up by advanced technologies.

When I wrote We won't ditch Earth I was pointing at the schizophrenia of a technological depiction of the future where we can terraform an alien world but not our own planet. Thus far the only other person I've encountered to point out this discrepancy is Isaac Arthur. While I'm sure we're not the only two people to notice this it's nice to hear somebody with an actual degree acknowledge that I'm not crazy for thinking this. Soothing my personal neuroses aside, SFIA has a lot to offer in the way of general information on the directions we could go as a species. It covers the near future of the next few decades all the way to the very distant future when all of the stars burn out and several futures in between. Most episodes are on a single topic like colonizing the moon, the future of thorium, or dark energy, though a few take on much more general topics such as just speculating on when we can expect to see what technology or the kinds of things that people will do with their time if we ever reach post-scarcity. While Isaac Arthur is an unabashed technological optimist, he tends to strike a neutral tone aimed at outlining the range of possible use cases or outcomes rather than promoting any in particular.

If the tone of this write-up isn't clear I love SFIA. In a media landscape saturated with depictions of human habitation of terraformed planets it's really, really nice to see a channel that cuts that crap out and says just build a Dyson swarm out of O'Neill Cylinders. I'd recommend SFIA for anybody with an interest in science, futurism, science fiction, or physics as it gives good overviews and even if a given episode doesn't have the exact information you're looking for it often provides an excellent jumping off point. Most episodes are about thirty minutes long. Here is a link to the Youtube channel and here's a link to the official site.

IRON NODER XIV: THE RETURN OF THE IRON NODER

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