The Monte Hall Effect
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01:26:45

1: Sunshine

April 16th, 2021

Tim and Tola talk about the 2007 Danny Boyle film "Sunshine." A bunch of people travel to the Sun with a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan. What could possibly go wrong? Some of the things we talk about: engineers vs scientists, risk analysis, what happens if you suddenly find yourself in outer space (tl;dr: you don't explode), why you shouldn't cut holes in your heat shield, purposely dabbling with opium when you're part of an Arctic expedition (tl;dr: bad idea), the limits of realism, and the tradeoffs you have to make as a filmmaker between scientific accuracy and dramatic necessity. Tola tells a Polish space joke (it's OK, he's Polish.)

Final score: Science 78%, Fiction 80%, Film 93%.