Having a Nice Chat with Aliens (Episode 23) - a podcast by Pam and Riley

from 2017-02-06T14:58

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This week we talked to Yussef Cole about the Oscar-nominated movie Arrival. Plus we get some Mass Effect talk in, because what's a Media Mavens episode without Mass Effect? Our main segment is full of spoilers for Arrival.


Guest and Topic Intro (00:00:32)


A brief intro to our guest, Yussef Cole, who writes about games for outlets such as Paste Magazine and hosts the Video Game Hour podcast.


What we've been up to (00:07:17)

Yussef (@youmeyou)



  • Hitman

  • Persona 4 Golden

  • Dishonored 2

  • Empire

  • I Am Not Your Negro

  • Hidden Figures

  • Split


Riley (@kaleri_)



  • Mystic Messenger Christmas DLC

  • Heroes of the Storm

  • Overwatch

  • Hwarang

  • Goblin: The Lonely and Great God


Pam (@jasyla_)



  • King's Quest

  • Tyranny

  • XCOM2

  • The Girl with all the Gifts (movie)

  • Obvious Child

  • The Black Tapes Podcast


Arrival (00:51: 30)



  • What is Arrival?

  • Mass Effect, Arrival and Social Responsibility in Sci-Fi (Yussef's article)

  • What both Arrival and Mass Effect say about the importance of humans and working together

  • How Arrival and its aliens differ from most other fiction

  • The importance of language

  • Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

  • Time travel

  • Wasn't this less convoluted, and therefore WAY BETTER, than Interstellar? @alatinolawyer

  • Is the ending of Arrival good? @xhugglesx

  • The aliens come with companions and convey language jointly. What lessons does this movie give about our beliefs on efficiency and teaching if they don't just show a video or learn our languages to communicate? @alatinolawyer


If you’ve got any feedback, questions, people or topics you’d like to hear on future episodes of the show, you can reach out at MediaMavensCast@gmail.com or on Twitter @_MediaMavens. If you like the show, please give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher.


Music: Vivacity by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

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