What 2001: A Space Odyssey Gets Right About AI, Art, and Human Evolution

Business! Our SECOND EVER Open Epilogue! Monday, March 23, at 1pm PST / 4pm EST. All paid supporters will get an email invite with a link. Be one of them! Episode highlights: Mal watched 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time, and talked about it every day for three weeks Stanley Kubrick’s astonishing team and the mind blowing scale of the project He tried to purchase preserved human embryos from a Chicago biological supply company for research He applied for insurance from Lloyd’s of London against the discovery of extraterrestrial beings before the film’s release The movie came out in 1968, a year before the moon landing, with basically two pictures of Earth from space to work from Shots that still hold up 60 years later What makes this movie transcendent Why Kubrick told actors not to emote The book and the movie were written simultaneously by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, then diverged at the end Clarke was a techno-optimist atheist who envisioned transcendence through technology; Kubrick saw something darker The bad news monolith Also: the phone in your pocket Is evolution terrifying? Is it good? Kubrick collapses linear time Moon landing was…probably real 97% of people can’t identify human-made vs ai-gen music A friend who spent 20 years making about 500 songs — AI makes a thousand in an afternoon The communal difference between art and AI slop Provenance is the point The porn-pocalypse — news, politics, food, music, everything is porn now When we dehumanize art we don’t experience anything Why the viola is out of tune on purpose The Great Man theory of history is stupid The idea that you can’t make art because you don’t meet criteria for profitability is “the worst way to treat yourself” Idolatry is worshipping the thing you make The two basic human needs Speaking of which… another Open Epilogue on March 23rd! And in the epilogue… Grand Theft Auto cheat codes How to achieve the bliss of absolute focus A fierce and exhausting debate about patriarchy We picked out three moments we all loved and tied them up with a little copy/paste-able bow. “Everything is porn now” (46:18) — Jordan defines porn: taking something real, subtracting everything except one sensation, and reproducing it at scale for profit — and applies it to news, politics, food, movies, music…everything. We’re living in a porn-pocalypse. “The viola is slightly out of tune” (49:39) — Tom explains that orchestras sound beautiful precisely because they’re not perfectly in tune, in a gorgeous defense of imperfection as the actual source of beauty. “Is the terror because it’s bad, or because everything has to die?” (~28:00–27:20) — Mal wonders if maybe the dissonant horror the monolith inspires isn’t a warning, it’s just what evolution feels like from the inside. Or just open up The Sharing Kit *** SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions. spectrevisionradio.com linktr.ee/spectrevisionsocial Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices