Escape Artists

Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Russell Nash on September 17, 2009, 07:15:50 AM

Title: EP011/EP625: Herd Mentality
Post by: Russell Nash on September 17, 2009, 07:15:50 AM
EP011: Herd Mentality (http://escapepod.org/2005/07/21/ep011-herd-mentality/)

By Jay Caselberg (http://www.sff.net/people/jaycaselberg).
Read by Stephen Serah Eley.

Einstein was getting old now. All of them. Not so old that he was past it, but you had to wonder. When our troops liberated the Spemann Lab complex in 1945, the Einsteins had been just five years old. The Government had done the humanitarian thing and brought them back home. Eventually, someone had leaked the information and slowly, slowly, public pressure and outrage had grown. The big hush-hush operation our government had mounted was shut down and the Einsteins were released – or rather, they were integrated into society in a humanitarian manner. That was the wording the government press releases used. Two hundred and fifty is a lot of Einsteins.

Rated G. Suitable for world-dominating clone armies of all ages.


(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://media.rawvoice.com/escapepod/media.libsyn.com/media/escapepod/EP011_HerdMentality.mp3)
Title: Re: EP011: Herd Mentality
Post by: Boggled Coriander on October 15, 2009, 04:25:59 AM
I really liked this story.  It's probably my favorite of the early Escape Pods.  I liked the visual image of the gathering of Einsteins, and the fact that the author did not go the cliched route of making the Einsteins an obviously malevolent force bent on controlling the world.

Having the character of Bill in there was a nice touch, although I have my doubts that that's what he'd end up doing in that universe.  But hey, who am I to say differently?
Title: Re: EP011: Herd Mentality
Post by: monkeystuff on October 15, 2009, 10:52:29 AM
I couldn't remember which one this was at first but I do now.  It was a pretty good one, I liked the idea of all those Einsteins being cloned and not knowing what our Einstein did in our reality.  What would the world be like if we had a couple hundred Einsteins...?  Well maybe we would have a unified theory.  Does this story show one of the benefits of cloning? Perhaps
Title: Re: EP011: Herd Mentality
Post by: Unblinking on January 20, 2010, 06:04:06 PM
Arg!  I wrote up a post for this one but the hamster poltergeists who dwell in the spaces between nodes have eaten it!

Um, so a cliff notes version of what I think I'd written:
1.  I liked it overall!
2.  The idea would've been more original if I hadn't already listened to the many Marilyn Monroes story.
3.  I also liked that the Einsteins weren't clearly malevolent.
4.  I wish the protagonist had shown some growth.  He learns all this new stuff about the Einsteins, seems to be very upset about it, and considering telling the world.  And then at the end he says "Meh, I guess the Einsteins know what they're doing.  I won't worry my pretty little head about it."  Which seemed like he was pulling a 180 for no reason.
Title: Re: EP011: Herd Mentality
Post by: phlegmatist on April 07, 2015, 02:01:12 AM
Good story, I liked it.  Made me wonder what would happen in reality if there were 250 Einsteins.
I don't believe they would all dress the same and have the same hair and mustache.  You sometimes see those weird identical twins who live together their whole lives and dress the same every day but it seems the exception rather than the rule.
I'm not sure what the latest is on nature vs nurture when it comes to intelligence, where is the balance point?  being genetically Einstein may not be enough, you might need the same education and upbringing and nutrition that he got too.  The life experiences might be even more important than the DNA, or it might be only a small factor.
Would Einstein's genius translate to other disciplines?  Perhaps, hard to say.  Certainly chemistry, engineering and maths would seem reasonable, but politics and social sciences?  I don't know about that.
The idea of age 50+ Einsteins ruling the world seems off to me.  Einstein wrote 5 papers in 1 year which was referred to as his "miracle year" when he was 25-26.  He came up with general relativity 11 years later and after that was pretty much a spent force, deemed a "relic" in the scientific world.
Title: Re: EP011: Herd Mentality
Post by: Zelda on May 04, 2018, 08:49:37 AM
Since no new thread has been started for this story, I've concluded that we were supposed to dredge this one up and add to it.

This was an interesting story and I have quite a few thoughts about it. More than I have time to discuss now. One thing that puzzled me was the narrator's reaction to the tattoos. Seeing one seemed to trigger his change of heart. It seems obvious they were related to the holocaust. It has always been my understanding that the only people with tattooed numbers were those who had been sent to a Nazi concentration camp or death camp. Were the little Einsteins nevertheless tattooed at the lab where they were created? Or had they, despite being the product of a successful (?) Nazi experiment, been sent to a camp themselves?
Title: Re: EP011: Herd Mentality
Post by: eytanz on May 05, 2018, 03:49:49 PM
This story has been re-released as EP625, so I'm resurrecting the old thread.
Title: Re: EP011/EP625: Herd Mentality
Post by: CryptoMe on May 10, 2018, 01:52:22 PM
I enjoyed the story. It was fun and interesting. But apparently not all that memorable for me, since I don't remember hearing it the first time round (and I know I went through all the back log when I discovered EP somewhere around episode 50). So, it was a whole new story for me. Thanks.
Title: Re: EP011/EP625: Herd Mentality
Post by: acpracht on May 18, 2018, 03:21:07 AM
A small look behind the curtain for those who might be curious:

In addition to putting together the new endcaps on each of these, I'm also taking the time to do a light "remaster" on the original tracks as well.

This mostly involves basic background noise removal, but also trying to mitigate / remove items such as flubs and minor audio errors. 

All this is to say, listening to these flashback episodes will certainly be a new (and, I hope, improved) experience. I also encourage you to go back and listen to the originals, though. Some of what was under discussion / being promoted back then is pretty entertaining ("But I don't have an mp3 player... Oh, sweet! There's a CD service!")

:)

-Adam
Title: Re: EP011/EP625: Herd Mentality
Post by: acpracht on May 24, 2018, 07:54:06 PM
A small look behind the curtain for those who might be curious:

In addition to putting together the new endcaps on each of these, I'm also taking the time to do a light "remaster" on the original tracks as well.

This mostly involves basic background noise removal, but also trying to mitigate / remove items such as flubs and minor audio errors. 

All this is to say, listening to these flashback episodes will certainly be a new (and, I hope, improved) experience. I also encourage you to go back and listen to the originals, though. Some of what was under discussion / being promoted back then is pretty entertaining ("But I don't have an mp3 player... Oh, sweet! There's a CD service!")

:)

-Adam

Hey, all,

In the original version of this post, I used a different way of phrasing "peek behind the curtain" that was sexist and racist.

My apologies for it.

Please know that I was using it without fully and consciously considering its history.

It was a phrase that entered my lexicon when my sense of humor was more sophomoric, but the reason I found it funny was because of the people saying it and the visual image it produced (rather than its deeper, more problematic origin).

I didn't think about it critically back then and honestly hadn't since until today when someone helped me out by bringing it to my attention.

Please know that I've now struck it from my vocabulary.

Thanks, and again, my apologies.

Adam
Title: Re: EP011/EP625: Herd Mentality
Post by: Ichneumon on June 21, 2018, 05:01:45 PM
There is yet to be a generation of Einsteins raised by Einsteins. No telling how they will turn out. Also, if you are already going to break the law and clone yourselves, why not add in some genetic engineering and boost up other traits?
Title: Re: EP011/EP625: Herd Mentality
Post by: yisits on November 04, 2018, 07:10:48 PM
I've fallen woefully behind on my Escape Pod listening but since I just listened to this episode I wanted to leave a comment regarding a side of this story that was hinted at in the ending commentary but I didn't see addressed here...maybe I missed it? as I'm not a pro at this...

First it is absolutely NOT clear, contrary to the end commentary, that the antisemitic side of this story was not intended.  It plays into all the outlandish conspiracy theories about Jews - that they control the media, are planning to take over the world, control the banks, create a world government...it is way too obvious to not be addressed.

Second every story whether the author acknowledges it or not builds on history or "baggage" as it's (somewhat) derogatorily referred to.  The fact that people will read into the story should not be simply ignored but should honestly be addressed.

Thirdly, simply looking at the story, it was boring.  No new insight was gained about the protagonist, that the Einsteins were planning a 'world government' was predictable and nothing new, and the quick ending with the main character not caring what was going to happen made no sense.