Shabcast 21, Part 1 – The Bow Section
I’m delighted to be able to mark Josh Marsfelder’s addition to Eruditorum Press with a mega-Shabcast in which Josh and I chat about some of our mutual obsessions.
Josh is awesomely informed and passionate. We talk about Star Trek and Josh’s blogging project about it, Vaka Rangi, which is now archived and ongoing here at EP. We talk about Aliens and Avatar and James Cameron generally, and especially about the Titanic – film and reality, and the differences between the two. Josh is really into the Olympic liners generally, and knows a ton about them. Suffice to say, the real story of these ships is more complex and resonant, more utterly imbued with the tang of history, than the myths. I had a great time listening to Josh talk about this stuff and I’m confident you will too.
I should probably warn you there are spoilers for 90s Star Trek. And also for Titanic. (Psst – the ship sinks, ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haaaa!)
Our loooooong chat will continue next Thursday in Shabcast 21b – The Stern Section, in which we will continue talking ships but also move into perhaps deeper waters.
Meanwhile, here are some links to things mentioned in the show:
Here‘s the website for the Titanic – Honor & Glory game project, complete with a chilling computer animated video of the ship sinking in real time. And here‘s their Facebook page. And here‘s their Tumblr. And here‘s some info about the Olympic, Titanic’s sister ship, as a war ship. And here are some more photos of Olympic. (Thanks for Josh for sourcing all these links.)
And here is the website for Ken Marschall, an artist whose visions of the Titanic have inspired Josh and many others.
EDIT – ADDITIONAL LINKS TO STUFF REFERRED TO IN THE SHABCAST:
Phil (with Josh’s help) on Super Metroid
Jack on Prometheus and again.
June 2, 2016 @ 2:26 pm
How serious do you reckon these spoilers are? I’ve been meandering towards the Next Generations or at least Deep Space. Is it anythingr really big? Would it matter much?
June 2, 2016 @ 4:18 pm
I don’t think any of the spoilers are that heavy. Just general stuff. No twists revealed or anything like that.
June 2, 2016 @ 8:13 pm
Turns out it was the name of his childhood project to make food out of humans, but he was dead all along so it didn’t really matter.
June 2, 2016 @ 3:05 pm
Noo, tell me why the Titanic sank dammit! shakes fist
New reader/listener here, I somehow stumbled on this place a few weeks back and been binging on articles and podcasts ever since. Seriously interesting discussion, looking forward to the stern section.
June 2, 2016 @ 3:23 pm
Thanks.
June 2, 2016 @ 6:53 pm
Fantastic! Love getting the chance to hear from Josh and getting your take on Trek, which is my oldest fandom.
And I’m quite enjoying these super-sized ‘casts you’re doing Jack. It’s like listening in on conversations with some of your best mates and I can’t get enough.
June 2, 2016 @ 11:53 pm
Rivet Counter is the best term for obsessional nerd that I have ever heard.
I am really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Alien 3. I too prefer that one to Aliens but also am at a loss at how to convince people that it’s a good movie. It’s interesting how Ripley is dropped into increasingly masculine worlds in each movie starting with space truckers, then marines, then the ultimate end point of toxic masculinity a group of convicted rapists. The exchange that always sticks out to me is the one between Ripley and Dillon where Dillon says “You don’t want to know me lady. I am a murderer and rapist of women.” and Ripley’s response is “I must make you very nervous then.” Also, the story of the making of that movie is just so fascinating that I consider it a part of the actual Alien canon.
June 6, 2016 @ 10:13 pm
Minuscule finicky nitpick: ramming was a standard method of sinking submarines in both World Wars, commonly performed (and survived) by warships as little as one-fiftieth the size of the Olympic, while several U-boats had previously been rammed and sunk by much smaller civilian ships, so there was nothing very remarkable in that.
July 17, 2016 @ 7:50 pm
I can’t recall if it was in this podcast or the other part, but you alluded at one point to the idea that classism, and the notion that humans are fundamentally selfish, might have its roots in the development of agriculture. I’d never encountered that notion before–can you direct me to some further reading?