2001: A Space Podyssey

03/06/2024

Show me the way, Satellite SAL...

Science fiction artist, video game animator, and media science communicator Virginia Smith joins us to discuss the world's most famous computer twins. While HAL was off flying a spaceship to Jupiter, incapable of error, his sister SAL-9000 was back in Urbana, Illinois identifying each of his mistake...

15/04/2024

The collapse of the Arecibo Observatory in 2020 marked the end of an era for generations of astronomers, climatologists, SETI researchers, and space enthusiasts. From 1963 until its closure in 2023, Arecibo, Puerto Rico housed the world’s largest radio telescope, and “2010” was originally goin...

02/04/2024

Heed the Mead!

For our first look at the book The Official Art of 2010, we pay tribute to the genius of concept artist Syd Mead, his career in industry and in entertainment, and his unique vision. He imagined not only cars, spinners, ships of sea, air and space, but immersive now worlds around them. Celebrating th...

22/03/2024

Thanks for all the fish!

Haunted by his past, Dr. Floyd moves to Hawaii and makes a new life with marine biologist wife, Caroline, and young son, Christopher. Still healing from years of tragedy, he finds himself at a crossroads to reinvent his purpose. Taking the last opportunity to atone for all that had gone horribly wro...

08/03/2024

BREAKING: some ice, no cheese

We're back on the Moon! Thanks to the success of our aptly named "Odysseus" lander, NASA and Intuitive Machines are kicking off a year full of amazing lunar landings and experiments. As the crew of Artemis II prepare to launch next September, what could be our future on the Moon? What are the benefi...

29/02/2024

Frequencies incoming...

Sunrise at the Very Large Array Telescope (VLA), and Drs. Floyd and Moisevitch have to plan a bi-lateral salvage operation between opposing world powers in less than two minutes. It's 2010's new space race, as filmed during the Cold War in '84. Dial in on the real-life function and history of the wo...

23/11/2023

Happy Thanksgiving from Skylab!

On this very special Thanksgiving episode we have a legendary guest, Skylab all-star Victor Scherrer of the Naval Research Laboratory, who co-designed the solar cameras for the Apollo Telescope Mount. He shares with us an intimate history of the program, the challenges and the victories of America's...

22/11/2023

Don't try to count how many times we say "Wally Gentleman."

Would there even be a "Space Odyssey" without the inestimable impact of two educational short films: "Universe" (1960) and "To The Moon and Beyond" (1964)? Not without the (Oscar-winning?) all-star team making history: Douglas Trumbull, Con Pederson, and Wally Gentleman! The agony and the ecstasy, t...

22/11/2023

Heading to Beyond. Please send socks (and not Twizzlers).

The pod has left Discovery, and now it's just us, Dave, and Gyorgy Ligeti. Through the monolith and into the stargate, we're hurtling past exploding nubulae ... alien civilizations ... Scotland? How far beyond Jupiter is the infinite, or has it been right here the whole time? And how similar is tran...

31/10/2023

"Great party, isn't it?"

It's Halloween, and it's "The Shining." What we talk about with author R.H. Vatcher is so terrifying and twisted, instead of a summary here's an episode Bingo card. Play along at home (if you dare...) BINGO! -NOW (National Organization for Women)-shadow as allegory-Fyodor Dostoevksy-"Emergency!"-Sig...

06/09/2023

"Any advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

This week, the unfailing optimism of Athur C. Clarke, his reflections and gratitude for a life well lived. The inspiration of discovery and the power of ideas. His lifelong passion for establishing extra terrestrial contact, and his foresight into the the threat and future of A.I. What would he thin...

25/08/2023

"The limits of the possible can only be defined by going beyond them into the impossible." - Arthur C. Clarke

Our first episode dedicated entirely to Arthur C. Clarke, scientist and writer, analyzer and explorer, dreamer and creator. A sweet and private English thinker who wrote little about himself, the laughing tropical raconteur who would boat you to a shipwreck and beat you at table tennis. We're lookin...

14/04/2023

Court's in session...

What's HAL's side of the story? Evidence that Clarke may be revealing more than we previously imagined about what's under the circuitry of the defendant and whether he has malevolent or melancholy machinations. How does personhood change the measure of the men, the machine, and the consequences aboa...

09/02/2023

Any onboard navigational computer must be ham-and-cheese sandwich proof.

We're flipping through HAL's family snapshots of all the friends that allowed him to end up in space. From the human supercomputer Katherine Johnson to the revolutionary Apollo Navigational Computer! Make some more NOIZE for Robert Noyce, it's... The Integrated Circuit! Plus: HAL's blueprints, the m...

10/12/2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/12/09/army-navy-jerseys-space/
Watching the Army Navy game with a WWII Navy veteran and Naval Research Laboratory physicist who helped design and mount cameras for Skylab and enjoying Navy’s NASA Alan Shepard-inspired jerseys and helmets today!

The Midshipmen and Black Knights will meet for the 123rd time wearing space-themed and World War II-themed jerseys.

05/12/2022

TODAY is the last day to help us help kids at St. Jude’s have a great Christmas! Click below to give a kid a gift on THEIR WISH LIST!

Give needed items to children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases at St. Jude. Your donations provide supplies for individual and group activities, stocking hospital playrooms, and providing gifts to patients.

04/12/2022

Tomorrow is the last day to help us to help kids fighting cancer have a great Christmas! You can send them gifts on THEIR OWN wish lists below!

Give needed items to children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases at St. Jude. Your donations provide supplies for individual and group activities, stocking hospital playrooms, and providing gifts to patients.

01/12/2022

Give needed items to children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases at St. Jude. Your donations provide supplies for individual and group activities, stocking hospital playrooms, and providing gifts to patients.

30/11/2022

Join us in helping kids at St. Jude’s have a great Christmas! The last day to donate is December 5!
Reply when you’ve donated and get a sticker from Santa’s favorite 9000-series elf!

Give needed items to children with cancer and other catastrophic diseases at St. Jude. Your donations provide supplies for individual and group activities, stocking hospital playrooms, and providing gifts to patients.

29/11/2022

So while Episode 10 sits in our "faulty transmitter," here's next week's show this week!

Deep in the data of the world's most famous computer is the memory and influence of Professor I. J. Good, special advisor to the production of 2001: A Space Odyssey and integral to the creation of the programming and personality of HAL-9000. Aside from aiding Alan Turing in the Enigma code-breaking....

29/11/2022

Um...this is embarrassing, but we're sure it's "human error."

A peek behind the scenes on base at Clavius. We're sure this "faulty transmitter situation" will be cleared up soon... Learn more and find our sources at www.spacepodyssey.com email us at [email protected] Twitter Facebook at

22/11/2022

Um, could somebody bring us up some snacks?

To celebrate the launch of Artemis I and the beginning of NASA's next chapter on the Moon, we're looking around our own home-sweet-home this week: Clavius Base! When was it built, and is it part of our evolutionary destiny? Were we meant to dig up the Monolith? How can we live here, and how many of....

19/11/2022

“What?! They’re back? They can’t be… what do you mean ‘on break?’ You promised me they weren’t doing any more episodes!”
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2001-a-space-podyssey/id1633093386?i=1000586321828

15/11/2022

Paint it black....

The Monolith is back and so are we! After some brief R&R aboard Space Station V, we're back on base - full of Howard Johnson's and duty-free gin - and ready to explore the myth, the meaning, and the makeup of this most iconic of parallelograms. SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF ALERT!! This episode contains s...

15/09/2022

Upgrade your grey matter, cause one day it may matter...
(with apologies to Deltron Zero and Automator)

A mysterious object has arrived, and we buckle down for a wild ride through the various concepts, designs and possible meanings of the Tycho Magnetic Anomaly known as the MONOLITH. The shape, the significance, the storytelling of this literal ICON of cinema. Humans have been building structures to c...

23/08/2022

Everybody's got something to hide, except for me and my monkey...
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-cgukk-12a76c2

In our third archaeological dig into the evolution of humans, it's a news flash! Some incredible developments have occurred in the world of anthropology in recent weeks forcing us to totally rethink our past and how we see ourselves - give or take a million years...Meet Littlefoot, Mrs. Ples, and Dr...

22/08/2022

New favorite band: Stuart Freeborn and the Astrolopiths
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Gl0oyI2zgRTKC7kIC2c46?si=WtRX9jX9RuiP_jGLrfbofg