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The Monte Hall Effect

The Monte Hall Effect

By: Tim Lloyd Tola Marts
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About this listen

 Tim Lloyd and Tola Marts are two leaders in the Seattle aerospace community with over forty years of experience between them dealing with aerospace and high tech issues. They're also avid film buffs, and in each podcast they'll take a different science fiction film and discuss three key facets: *Science: How well do the scientific ideas in the film reflect real science. *Fiction: Do the film's plot and characterization take the viewer on a fun or intriguing journey? And… *Film: Does the movie make the most of cinematography, so that it works better in conveying its ideas than it would in a book, or graphic novel, or play? At the end of each podcast they’ll give the film a percentage ratings for each of those facets. NOTE: there will be spoilers for the film being discussed, but they will try to keep spoilers for other films to a minimum. The podcast theme music- intro and outro- is written and performed by Guy Ellis, and more of his music can be found at https://soundcloud.com/gu42 and https://www.facebook.com/cloudcoverband/.© 2025 The Monte Hall Effect Art Science
Episodes
  • 15: Close Encounters of the Third Kind

    15: Close Encounters of the Third Kind
    Aug 30 2025
    Tola and Tim welcome our long time collaborator Guy Ellis, composer and performer of our theme and outro songs, to discuss "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," including being homesick, Balok's All Hour Disco and Discount Delicatessen, Guy eating his dessert before dinner, Disco Versions of Theme Songs, Bob Balaban vs Wallace Shawn, saying "Present Day" in a film, the Raiders Connection, teasing the audience visually, fearless three year olds, the director putting his finger on the scale, the great character actor Roberts Blossom (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfPihquW95g), the ubiquity of the Close Encounters theme, all the people who turned down the role that defined Richard Dreyfuss' career, manifesting what you see in your artist's inner eye, Douglas Trumbull's mist machine, Guy's band Cloud Cover (https://www.cloudcoverband.com/), the Kodály music language, the challenge of interspecies communication, solving everything w/ LLMs, the baud rate of baleen whales, the Deep Space Network, cartography's moment in the sun, the pure awesomeness of Devil's Tower National Monument, Tola forgets the name of amazing author N. Scott Momaday (who Tola heard lecture at the University of Minnesota in 1997 and who recently passed away), Tola's love for Melinda Dillon as an actress and incredulity that she didn't become a giant movie star, Kraftwerk cover bands, speculation that having a competent government would be nice, faking a plague (D'oh!), embarrassing your spouse in front of the neighbors, reminiscing about when there were only four news channels, competent investigators, Tim's grandfather and Rockwell International, Merle Haggard, sneaking the Jaws theme into the sound mix, floating oil refineries, musical communication, the refreshing lack of a sequel to this movie, capturing and bottling up pure concentrated wonder, "Fifty Solutions to Fermi's Paradox" by Stephen Webb, debating the existence of aliens, living in the celestial equivalent of North Dakota, and seeing movies when you're young versus later in life. Final score: science 60%, fiction 87%, and film 96%. Next time on the Monte Hall Effect: the 2025 film "The Fantastic Four: First Steps." Special Guest: Guy Ellis.
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    2 hrs and 7 mins
  • 14: Dune: Part Two

    14: Dune: Part Two
    Jun 29 2025
    In this episode the guys take on 2024's Denis Villeneuve's "Dune: Part Two" and ponder bitless podcast starts, sequels, the Denis Villeneuve oeuvre, telegraphing the beginning of Dune Messiah, giving a giant middle finger to Joseph Campbell (thanks to Haris Durrani's discussion of this topic on Our Opinions Are Correct (https://www.ouropinionsarecorrect.com/shownotes/2020/10/22/episode-69-lets-obsess-over-the-politics-of-dune)), Part 2 being Chani's movie, Ellen Ripley vs Chani haters, film faithfulness to source novels, Tim points out yet again that he was able to hang out with Roger Ebert a whole bunch back in the day, Tola briefly arguing that Fight Club (book and film) glorify fascism but then letting the issue drop, the Dune novel being really long, the rise of the House of Saud, Jordanian film boosterism, critiquing desert gear, the back history of the Fremen, obscuring mythology versus prophecy, the genius of Charlotte Rampling, misuse of stillsuits, Tola and Tim waste time calculating orders of magnitude of volumes of water, Stilgar as Morpheus, true belief vs Machiavellianism, a brief glimpse of Anya Taylor-Joy, side quests, targeting the poor, sand snorkels, lasers vs shields, the ever present ghost of the David Lynch Dune film, conveying disgustingness without resorting to homophobia, rivers of blood and mountains of skulls, Paul's evolving attitude towards theocracy and genocide, riding the worm (in 1983 vs 2024), a xenobiological assessment of Arrakis ecology, Christopher Walken's thespian choices, missing the Guild navigators, the challenge of Giedi Prime tourism, optimizing your bureaucracy, Frank Herbert and his persistent obsession with magical coochies, sacrificial idiots, artistry vs goodness vs happiness, the transformative power of pragmatism, Chekhov's Nuclear Warhead, understanding partner comment context, stupid tech bros and their stupid drugs, Timothée Chalamet hitting it out of the park, cold reading, Polish Sejm as historical precursor for the Landsraad, photogenic nuclear bombs, facing giant death worms, Tola's nerd questions for Tim about women and swords, the utter no-contestedness of Sardaukar facing Fremen, becoming Harkonnen, movie Chani vs book Chani, shaking off a kidney knife puncture, confusion in the last five minutes (a la Primer), nothingburger secret reveals, Galactic population estimates, ending it all with Chani as audience proxy, Chekhov's Florence Pugh, and another shout out to the great SciFi channel Dune miniseries. Final score: Science (60%), Fiction (85%), Film (97%). Next up: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" where Tola revisits his childhood!
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    2 hrs and 19 mins
  • 13: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension

    13: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension
    May 24 2024
    Tola and Tim are joined by our wonderful editor, Paul, to discuss the 1984 cult classic, "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension." Featuring an all-star cast including Jeff Goldblum as one of the least-weird characters, Robocop's Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Christopher Lloyd as John Bigbooté, Yakov Smirnoff, Ellen Barkin, Clancy Brown, and many more, this film was either a labor of love or made of cocaine...or all of the above! Tola and Tim address important questions like, can you drive a jet-powered car at 400 mph through a mountain, while Paul brings his musical expertise to questions like, what does a piccolo trombone sound like, and can you really play two saxophones at the same time? Final Score: Science 28%, Fiction 63%, Film 63%. Next up: Dune, Part 2! Special Guest: Paul Zastrow.
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    1 hr and 30 mins
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