Episode
What 2001: A Space Odyssey Gets Right About AI, Art, and Human Evolution
- Podcast
- Gods, Ghosts & UFOs
- Published
- Mar 18, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3691
- Processing state
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Summary
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 Spea…